Fuel prices in last week, 1p tax increase, where has the other 6p came from!?

TheCleaner

TheCleaner

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UPDATE Reviving this thread in the midst of another massive price hike (in the space of 12 hours, diesel went from 124.9 to 132.9) with seemingly strange timing; new year was preceeded by 3 normal business days that were pretty much snow free, so no excuses of delivery fuel not getting to the stations, and it may be a bank holiday weekend but christmas weekend seen a double bank holiday with quite bad snow, though prices stayed reasonably stable, and its not the VAT increase because that isnt effective until tomorrow the 4th.

Im not looking forward to the VAT increase, but it look like they will be doubly profiteering by price hiking at new year, and again when the VAT goes up. Im most interested to see if it only goes up by 2.5%, or, like in April, is a lot more but they get away with it because 'everyone is expecting an increase'. Fuel and oil companies, like food and supermarkets, another basic commodity, are all bloody oligopolised! all the companies are in with each other, all putting prices up to shaft the already struggling working man, while posting profits constantly, its getting worse by the day. /rant


I'm surprised there isnt lots of threads/news already, with imminent strike action from haulage firms etc.

What was is that pushed back to way under ?1/L last time it got this high? I recall the supermarkets dropped their prices first then the big companies soon followed through loss of custom.

Reports say that by the goverment staggering the 3p tax increase, its costing the treasury ?550M.. well I've seen a 7p increase since filling up last week! Are the fuel companies thinking "oh, everyones expecting it to go up anyway, and they'll just blame it on tax".

In light of that, I think the government should have just got the whole 3p over and done with, and put that ?550M saved, to mending some of the damn pot-holes still on the roads! anyone sustained damage from them too?

I'm kind of glad petrol and diesel are back the same, for a good while, us diesel folk were getting shafted 12-15p more per litre, and the mpg/tax saving weren't taking up the slack.

What are people of general automotive forum's thoughts on it all? Theres not much being said, or done.. other than rants like mine just there (sos, but how angering is it!)
 
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where has the other 6p came from
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It?s the (easter) holidays ... fuel prices always rise like mad before easter, christmas or summer holidays. It?s called ripping people off ... gas stations always do it when people need their cars to get somewhere in the distance, and around holidays there is a lot of long distance travel ...
 
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the Interceptor said:
Yes, but it's still ridiculously low compared to what it reached in the last crisis, and we pay almost the same for fuel now.[...]
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A Part of it is due to the Dollar having risen again since 2009 compared to the euro ... last time the euro was at 1,60 Us-dollars. Now it?s 1,30 Us Dollars. If it were to reach 1:1 exchange rate (like roughly 7 years ago) , we?d be close to 2 Euro per litre now ...
 
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I was going to say.. its high was around $148/b in mid 2008, but it is at thios present time around $87.. yet the pumps are the same. Not even with the weak ?-$ exchange does it make sense.

Are we just so used to being shafted and the price of fuel rising that we dont give a toss anymore? I know theres not a lot that can be done as private commuters other than use less fuel, but that drives prices up too, as the fuel companies see they'r not making as much profit, they hike the price on fuel you do get.

I'm on of the luckier ones i guess, with a small diesel hatch that will do 50mpg no matter how i drive it, and 60-odd if i go into sunday driver mode. plus ?35/y tax, but no matter which way i look at it, its gone up around 20% in the past 6 months (its not that long ago that i was filling at 99.9, maybe autumn 09). if that trend continued, where will we be by year end.

but what was it that caused the massive fall in price per barrel in 08? it didnt reflect fully at the pumps mind, just mean they were paying far less per barrel, but selling it a 'bit' less on the forecourt. a drop from mid-08 $150/b down to end-08 $40/b didnt show up as roughly 60% drop in pump prices. Tax pushes it up, but proportional to the initial cost as a %... profits profits.. and the excuse.. to discourage driving private vehicles. funny then, that it would cost more to travel on public transport since the buses/trains are stupidly high, and its not likely prices on them go down when they've got up..
 
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I thought the U.K. obtains all its oil from the North Sea?
 
argatoga said:
I thought the U.K. obtains all its oil from the North Sea?
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Even if they did, the price would be influenced by the global oil price as long as there is no government intervention. Let's assume global and local price were both 100 per barrel in whatever currency. Now the global price might rise to 110 - what would the company drilling in the North Sea do? Sell locally for 100? Sell globally for 110? Raise local price?

That's right, option one will not happen in a free market.


On topic, you need 13% more Euros now than in December. Compared to that fuel prices in Kiel went up about 10% since then. Over half of that is fixed taxes, so the price without those went up over 20%. Judging by the graphs posted above oil did go up a bit, explaining the additional 7% increase.
...what that does not explain is the extreme variation during the day, week, month...

https://pic.armedcats.net/n/na/narf/2010/04/07/preise.png
 
we are at about ?1.4 o_O... what are you guys complaining about >.> costs me ?114 to fill up completely from an empty tank (with that price)... dont really mind tho, since my car is worth it :D
 
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WillDAQ said:
Not any more, quite a lot comes in by pipe from the east.
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Ah OK.

narf said:
Even if they did, the price would be influenced by the global oil price as long as there is no government intervention. Let's assume global and local price were both 100 per barrel in whatever currency. Now the global price might rise to 110 - what would the company drilling in the North Sea do? Sell locally for 100? Sell globally for 110? Raise local price?

That's right, option one will not happen in a free market.
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True enough. Pretty much all the oil in the USA comes from our own drilling, Alberta (Canda), and Venezuela.
 
argatoga said:
Pretty much all the oil in the USA comes from our own drilling, Alberta (Canda), and Venezuela.
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According to wikipedia the USA consumes over 900 million tons, and produces 305 million tons. Add in exports by Canada and Venezuela (to all countries) and you'll get 491 million tons, roughly half of the USA's consumption.

Bottom line is, even if the USA does not export one drop of oil and every drop of exported oil from Venezuela and Canada ends up in the USA you're still importing half your consumption from elsewhere.
 
narf said:
Compared to that fuel prices in Kiel went up about 10% since then. Over half of that is fixed taxes, so the price without those went up over 20%.
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That's not quite right. You are correct in saying that 2/3rds of the German fuel price are taxes. However, the "Energiesteuer" (formerly the "Mineral?lsteuer") is a fixed tax of 65.45 Eurocents on each liter of fuel. Only the "Mehrwertsteuer" rises with the fuel price, since it is calculated via percentage. I did make a sample calculation just the other day, and it showed that with a hypothetical 10 Eurocent increase in fuel prices, 2 cents go to the government and 8 cents to the fuel companies.
 
Ok, maybe we misunderstood each other :)

What I meant to say was that after deducting the fixed per-litre tax the increase of the variable, crude-oil and refinery based price in percent is about twice as much. The 65 cent is exactly what I was referring to, December is used as my base price at just under 1.3?/l, just over half of that is 65.5c :nod:

http://www.aral.de/aral/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9013263&contentId=7025890 has got it compressed into a nice graph. All taxes combined currently are 88.4c/l or 62% :cry:
 
Yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing. :lol:
 
At least it's still cheaper than bull sperm... :)
 
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