Gas prices!

[Eclipse]

high octane ftw

[theyoungster]

wow..i dont even think i've seen anything higher than 96 octane at the pumps :eeps:

[E36 Phantom]

Originally Posted by oakley

Id rather pour bleach in my eyes and spend a weekend tied up naked at a party where the only guests consisted of Gary glitter and Michael Jackson.....
Plus im a big fan of global warming- The sooner this freezing dump of a country warms up the better

Was 71*F (22*C) here in Sunny San Diego at about 9pm tonight, mate. Nice and comfy.

Originally Posted by oakley

So are your fuels octane levels recorded differently or are you guys just shafted with crap octane?? Even our supermarket "premium" is 99 octane (yes I know I shouldnt use supermarket fuel but I always have!! )

They're figured differently. You guys use either RON or MON, I can't remember which - whichever one's higher, as your rating system. We use the average of the 2, so our octanes look lower. I think your 95 or 96 is equivalent to our 87.

Sadly, though, the rest of the country gets access to 93 (highest standard premium gas in the US).......backwards California limits us to 91

[Pirate_Copy]

We indeed use RON

I filled up with 97 RON V-power yesterday and it cost $120 for 50 litres

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by oakley

Plus im a big fan of global warming- The sooner this freezing dump of a country warms up the better

Right now I'm listening to a local energy issues radio shoe co-hosted each Saturday morning by a very amazing 90 year old mechanical engineering PhD and a local inventer who also consults and sells insulation, and one thing they report on each week is how many heating degree days behind or ahead of the average we are. Thus far this season we're 14 degree days (very slightly below average) behind and overall this last decade it's cooled slightly too. So, here in Maine, I'm more than ready for some of this global warming I've heard so much about! Instead, it looks like I'll soon be paying an additional CO2 tax to mostly fund unworkable "solutions" to a problem that may not even exist, at least not where I live. I wouldn't mind so much if it actually was getting warmer, but paying yet another tax even as my heating costs rise is rubbing salt in the wound. Also, despite how it will be presented, this will largely be a tax on average to poor people because a much greater percentage of their incomes goes to heat their homes than for the wealthy pols who are promoting it. Politicians will "sell" it to us by actually levying the tax on those evil "big energy using corporations" and oil companies who will blithely raise prices on everything they sell to make it up, so WE will ultimately end up paying the tab for energy illiterate politicians silly ideas that they peddle to us in order to get themselves re-elected.

I wouldn't keep a Prius if someone gave me one either, but I think the technology is interesting, especially for city drivers, and wish that BMW would make a hybrid version of the 1 series using either an engine similar to the diesel engines they use in Germany or one of their smaller engines such as the one used in the old 318's. One additional plus of the hybrids is that big battery in the back combined with a front mounted engine, allows engineers to almost perfectly balance the weight of the car, great for performance! Here in the rural area where I live it doesn't make much sense though because there's so little stop and go driving where the hybrids excel. Here, the extra weight of the battery just doesn't get a chance to "pay" for itself so better to stick with a normal car that's as efficient as you can stand.

[Paul@Mei]

Well, I'm paying just over £1 (or whatever the exchange rate to dollars is right now) a litre for 97RON Vpower which means filling up now costs about £45, rather than the £55 it was costing about six months ago.

That's a good feeling, to know you're £10 a tank better off than before - even better when the amount I can claim back from expenses hasn't changed at all, so I'm doubly better off with a cheap price than an expensive one.

BUT, when petrol was $150 a barrel, we paid about £1.30/litre for it at the pump. Now it's down around $65 a barrel, but we're only seeing a 'drop' down to £1/litre. Should be more like 70p/litre.

Not exactly a huge surprise that we're being ripped off, but it's f*cking annoying when everything else is so expensive that the big companies are allowed to fleece us like this! It's a bit of a joke that prices rise like a rocket and drop like a feather, but the more it happens, the more it's obvious how true it is...

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by Paul@Mei

BUT, when petrol was $150 a barrel, we paid about £1.30/litre for it at the pump. Now it's down around $65 a barrel, but we're only seeing a 'drop' down to £1/litre. Should be more like 70p/litre.

Not exactly a huge surprise that we're being ripped off, but it's f*cking annoying when everything else is so expensive that the big companies are allowed to fleece us like this! It's a bit of a joke that prices rise like a rocket and drop like a feather, but the more it happens, the more it's obvious how true it is...

Oops, I can understand your outrage but unfortunately you've got the wrong villain in your crosshairs. The reason that prices don't fall in proportion to the decrease in the price of crude oil has a lot less to do with what any corporation is doing and a lot more to do with government policy. Your politicians in Great Britain have made the decision to raise money for the government and to generally discourage energy use by taxing it heavily. They don't tax it on a percentage basis either, it's mostly on a per liter basis. So, when the price of the raw materials decreases by half and the oil companies significantly lower their prices for fuel, the government still demands the same amount of money as before from you every time you buy a liter of it. Even if the oil companies were giving away gasoline for free, you would still have to pay about the same amount per gallon as we are now paying here in the US, including our (also too high, IMHO) fuel taxes. That's just how incredibly high your fuel taxes are. I don't blame you for being pissed, but that's apparently one way your country has decided to pay for all the government services provided to its citizens. You know that "free" health care you are entitled to.....

I understand that each country has to pay for the government services demanded by its citizens, but I DO object to the press, with a leftist political agenda, obscuring where your money is going in order to make it look like "evil corporations" are screwing the populace instead of revealing that it's the policies of those whose political agenda they favor that are really hurting you the most. Encouraged by the liberal press who at best tell you one side of the story, the people vote in these liberal pols who promise you more services and to "fight for you" against the corporations who they say are screwing you, when in fact it is THEY who are doing most of the screwing. Of course the pols then feel obligated to provide you with at least some of the additional services they promised when they were campaigning, that's easy, just charge you yet another few cents every time you buy a liter and then point to those "evil corporations." And it goes on and on.

From Wickipedia:
United Kingdom
Main article: Hydrocarbon oil duty
From 2007-10-01 the main road fuel (petrol and diesel) duty rate in the UK is GBP£0.5035 per litre (GBP£2.2890/imperial gal or GBP£1.9059/US gal). The rate for biodiesel and bioethanol is £0.3035/L (GBP£1.3797/imperial gal or GBP£1.1489/US gal).[2] Value Added Tax (VAT), currently at 17.5%, is also charged on the price of the fuel and on the duty. At a pump price of 100.0p/litre (typical for petrol in late October 2008), this would put the combined tax at 65.24p/litre, or approximately USD$3.80 per US gallon. Thus without tax, the retail price would be 34.76p per litre, making a combined tax rate of 188%.

[Paul@Mei]

Believe me, I'm aware of the level of tax we pay and how it's broken down. I'm also aware of how petrol stations don't make a huge percentage on each sale, and that the record profits recorded by big oil companies are more to do with their drilling business than the sale of petrol at the pumps.

The point that I'm making is that when petrol prices were on the up earlier in the year, we saw prices rises every week, if not twice a week. Now they're falling, we're not seeing the same reduction. It doesn't matter whether that price increase/reduction is oil company profits/petrol station profits or just plain tax, if a rise at the well means a rise at the pump, then a fall does too.

Also, I don't think you have much experience of daily life in the UK if you honestly think we're duped by the media and the government into thinking oil companies are the biggest reason for high petrol prices. Whinging about tax is practically a national hobby, and we all know that our high petrol prices are due to tax rather than anything else. It's just that most people see some sort of benefit in paying taxes, whereas giving money to a big corporation doesn't do us much good at all.

And finally. We have liberal press, we have conservative press, we have bias and we have downright lying journalists who'll say anything for a quick buck. Just like America. Please don't paint us as weirdo Liberals who can't see the truth in front of ours faces - we're no more right or wrong that you are.

EDIT: To further my point and provide some figures, look at this graph (Ignore the we are here, it's old, but serves its purpose).



The last time oil prices were around $60, the cost of a litre of petrol in the UK was about 85p. At the moment, we're paying about £1 a litre. That's 15p a litre 'extra' over the cost of petrol under the same conditions only a couple of years ago. Now unless the government has introduced some new taxes lately (and they haven't, because the fuel escalator has been frozen for ages and new taxes on petrol are exactly the kind of thing people tend to vote against...) that extra profit is being made by one of the companies involved in providing petrol that isn't passing that saving on to the customer in the same way they were a year ago. Because the whole thing is so murky, it's virtually impossible to see exactly who is making that money - another reason why tax isn't that bad, because at least you can see what you're paying and to whom!

So yes, there's the reason I'm annoyed about petrol prices. Not because OMG Exxon Mobil made $XXX billon profits aren't they so evil and capitalist why can't we nationalise them and make them all communist like us, but simply because there's a disparity in UK petrol prices right now which isn't being explained. If it went, and prices fell back to 85/p a litre, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

[Pirate_Copy]

PERSONALLY I say 'good on you' to Shell, BP and Exxon Mobile for making such massive profits.

If i was on their board of directors or a shareholder, would i be complaining? Would i hell. It would be an M5 for every day of the week

[jtsailjt]

When oil prices are rising, oil companies raise petrol prices to pay for the higher priced oil they will be buying to make more. You're right that it seems they always seem to be right on the ball about raising prices promptly when it's on the way up but it would be imprudent for the oil companies to not be. As crude oil prices fall, the oil that is actually being refined at that moment was more expensive for the oil company to buy than what it would cost today, so the decrease in petrol prices lags that of crude prices. So, when there is a lot of volatility in oil prices, the market tends to set prices slightly higher just to be sure they don't end up selling their product at a loss. Once crude oil prices stabilize, it becomes easier to "refine" their petrol prices to reflect a more consistent margin between petrol and crude.

Put yourself in the shoes of the oil company guy who has to set petrol prices each day.

First, if crude prices were rising rapidly, and you had a few million gallons of petrol to sell, would you want to base todays petrol sale price on what the oil it came from cost you, or would you want to hedge your bet and base it on what it was likely going to cost you to replace it tomorrow?

Next, as prices fall, and you have a bunch of petrol on hand that you had made from expensive crude oil you bought 3 months ago, would you sell it at a lower price based on what you could buy crude oil for today (but maybe not tomorrow) or would you want to base your sale price to cover your costs for that much more expensive crude oil you bought a few months ago?

If crude has cost the same amount for several months, he can more accurately predict his costs and as other petrol producers do the same and do what they can to increase their market share, he is forced to adjust his petrol sales prices accordingly and the crude-petrol margin can stabilize at a lower amount.

We may not like it but it's just honest businessmen being pragmatic and fulfilling their legal obligation to do their best to make a profit for their stockhohlders. At times like this with crude oil prices falling, all we can do is to buy less (less demand=pressure for price decrease) or at least delay filling up as long as we can. Of course one person doing that means nothing, but if millions do, it will encourage at least some retailers to lower their prices a bit just to make a sale, and then the competition follows suit if they want to compete. We have a limited ability to do this because for many of us petrol is NOT a discretionary purchase, but collectively we do have some leverage to encourage them to drop prices.

I really don't understand your logic when you say that with taxes you know where your money is going but you are frustrated that's not the case with the rest of the price of petrol. Yeah, the tax part is going to the government in general, but beyond that do you REALLY think you know where it is? On the other hand, the portion of what you pay that does not go to the government goes to the oil companies to pay for the purchase of crude oil, exploration, research, taxes they pay, all the costs of refining and delivering the product to you, the paychecks/benefits of all their employees, and last but not least, the dividends they pay their stockholders. Beyond that, if you REALLY want to know just where your money is/goes, don't trade it to them for their petrol, arrange your life so you can keep it yourself. If you think the oil companies are gouging people like you and me, so will have ever increasing profit margins, instead of just being frustrated by that, you can sign up to get "your cut" of this gouging back just by buying some stock in the company!