If you're looking to pour Prince Edward Island maple syrup over pancakes this year, you’re out of luck.

None of the six producers on the Island made syrup this year, a drought blamed on stormy winter weather and high fuel prices.

Philip Brown, who buys locally produced syrup for the Bestofpei Market in Charlottetown, said problems for the small industry began last fall when windstorms felled tree limbs, which in turn knocked down kilometres of lines used to transport sap from the maple grove to the sugar shack.

Then the price of fuel skyrocketed, making it more expensive to boil the sap into syrup, he said, because most large producers use furnace oil in the process.

“And it takes a lot of heat to create a gallon of maple syrup,” Brown said.

The trickle-down effect has left the Charlottetown market with no syrup to sell.

“Where we only have P.E.I. products, there’s no alternatives for us. So many tourists want to buy P.E.I. syrup when they’re here, but we just don’t have it available," Brown said.

Some tourist outlets and other markets are bringing in bottles of the golden treat from New Brunswick, but there’s also a scarcity of maple syrup in that province, as well as in Nova Scotia and Quebec, said Yvon Poitras, head of the New Brunswick Maple Syrup Association.

This has been the worst year for maple syrup production in nearly four decades, Poitras said.

"That applies to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and especially Quebec, which is the biggest producer in the world," he said, adding Quebec provides 80 per cent of the world’s supply of syrup.

With only about one half the usual amount of maple syrup produced this year, most producers have already shipped all they have, Poitras said.