Re: Petrol prices : Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:27 pm  

Prices will go through the roof and then the sky will fall in.



I'm sure if I could be arrissed I could make a joke out of that.

Re: Petrol prices : Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:41 am  

People are using public transport more often (hence crowded trains despite there being more trains), cycling is booming, supermarkets are reporting that they are getting lower footfall at out-of-town supermarkets (i.e. people are going less often, spending less overall but buying more per visit), Tesco are cutting back on building out-of-town (not pulling-out of it but they see the future in putting more shops nearer to where the shoppers are), people are generally less keen on just jumping into the car and fuel consumption is more often seen as a vital statistic when buying a car.

Some behaviour is changing, gradually.

Re: Petrol prices : Wed Jan 25, 2012 4:37 pm  

Ajw71 wrote:

WW3?

Now you're just trying to cheer Dally up!

Re: Petrol prices : Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:11 pm  

I believe about 75% is tax,no doubt someone will put me right.When I was delivering to petrol stations the garage itself made about 1 pence per litre.More profit was made in the shop,believe it or not.

Re: Petrol prices : Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:26 pm  

barton baird wrote:

I believe about 75% is tax,no doubt someone will put me right.When I was delivering to petrol stations the garage itself made about 1 pence per litre.More profit was made in the shop,believe it or not.

A penny, one penny or, if you must, one "P".
Not 1 pence.
Pence is plural.

Re: Petrol prices : Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:51 pm  

barton baird wrote:

I believe about 75% is tax,no doubt someone will put me right.When I was delivering to petrol stations the garage itself made about 1 pence per litre.More profit was made in the shop,believe it or not.

The general word is that a typical averagely busy urban garage makes around 3p a litre. I believe they actually make more, in many cases, certainly out of town ones do as they charge clearly a few pence at least more than you would pay in a city.

I fill up at Morrisons and they seem to have queues at the pumps most of the time. Getting out my fag packet, 16 pumps selling (say) 50 litres every 5 minutes for 16 hours.

Roughly 150,000 litres, allowing 8 hours of zero sales (though its open 24/7)

1p - 3p means £1500 - £4500 profit a day.

Despite the back of a fag packet calculation, there's clearly money to be made. Last year Shell made £1.6m per HOUR. Granted sales of the stuff don't make up the majority of that but the fact they won't actually say how much they make from fuels sales tells its own story doesn't it?

When I see a boarded up petrol station I reckon that the problem is most likely to be the prohibitive permanent cost, given the hike in fuel prices, of the purchase price of the petrol station, and the buying in cost of your stock ie the fuel in your storage tanks.

I have just googled "petrol stations for sale" and looked at only the top of the first page of results, and found "MID GLAMORGAN- SUBSTANTIAL PETROL FORECOURT for sale - £2,000,000".
This does not sound like people think they're a bad investment, and that's before you even consider the huge amounts of money they must make on selling stuff from their inevitable and well stocked shops.

Re: Petrol prices : Wed Jan 25, 2012 11:02 pm  

Personally I hope they tripple the cost of petrol, price more people off the road (especially the school runs) and let me drive on quieter streets.

Re: Petrol prices : Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:27 pm  

Well done, unfortunately, not everyone is as rich as you.

Re: Petrol prices : Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:46 pm  

Ajw71 wrote:

Read an article about electric cars a couple of weeks ago. Sales are very poor. One of the reasons is they are so expensive. 25k even with a 5k Govt subsidy.

Correct.

Electric cars are expensive, and don't give you (yet) the range that a petrol or diesel car will. Only when the price of these start to come down, will the public consider them as being a real alternative.

Similarly, as long as public transport is inefficient, dirty, expensive and not particularly convenient (in other words, the rest of the country needs to catch up to London), then again, people will continue to use their cars.

Its a sad situation, and one which needs a complete, from the bottom upwards, rethink, and a good 10 years to implement.

Re: Petrol prices : Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:48 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

What I do find somewhat surprising is why the oil companies sold off the refining operations to 3rd parties. They have traditionally controlled all operations from well to tank but for some reason decided (almost en-masse) to ditch refining. I can only assume that their shareholders decided that there was not enough margin in refining (there seems little scope for adding further value in that process) and instructed them to sell it off and book the cash. So they sell it off to smaller operations, who don't have the finances to withstand a period of high raw material prices AND lower demand. Obviously a short-term gain for big oil but a potential problem if other refiners are suffering similar problems.

Not really. The oil companies will no doubt have sold the refineries for a lovely amount of cash, and will be able to buy them back again for next to nothing if the operators keep going out of business.