Gas prices are expected to increase significantly overnight, thanks to bad weather and violence in the Middle East.

News 95.7 is predicting the Utility and Review Board will add about a nickel on to regulated prices tonight, moving the price of regular self-serve from $1.267 to about $1.31 in metro.

While the change is significant, the founder of Consumers for Fair Gas prices says he’s not expecting it to launch a new trend of rising prices for the rest of the summer.

“We’ll be hanging around that $1.30 mark,” George Murphy told the Rick Howe Show Wednesday. “We predicted that at the start of the summer. And that we’d see some hiccups in price upwards, some down, but generally hanging around $1.30 a litre.”

Murphy blames this week’s increase on three factors, starting with the threat to Iran’s crude oil exports.

“(There’s) the threat of the violence in Syria spilling over to Iran,” he said. “There have been some news reports to the possibility that there has been some Iranian involvement in Syria and the possibility of violence spreading to Iran.”

Murphy says traders fear the violence in Syria will spill over into neighboring nations and disrupt supplies to the consuming countries.

Iran’s production is roughly four million barrels a day.

Friday’s better-than-expected US jobs report is also expected to create some economic optimism and drive investors to oil and refined products.

“Consumers south of the border have already seen upwards of thirty cents on a US gallon this week alone,” Murphy writes on his blog. “That was enough to show oil prices moving up by close on $5.50 over the last week!”

Murphy says concerns about refinery supply are also a factor this week. Hurricane Ernesto, now a tropical storm, was tracking toward the Gulf of Mexico last week, and a fire at a Chevron refinery in San Francisco Bay is being blamed for a spike in California gas prices.

“The oil play was up,” said Murphy. “We saw oil prices play up by about $5.”

In New Brunswick, regulated gas prices climbed 4.9 cents a litre overnight to a new maximum of $1.30. Diesel prices also rose from $131.2 to $1.325.

In Toronto, unregulated prices were expected to increase by two cents overnight, moving the average price in the GTA to $1.328.