Petrol/diesel prices

I see the recent trouble in the Middle East is being blamed for the price rises in fuel.

On the news this morning they made what I thought was a slightly strange statement.

It said in effect that yesterday oil prices rose due to the trouble and they are at a level they have not been at since 2008.
Maybe I heard it wrong

Now, if I heard it right I cant understand why we are not paying 2008 prices for petrol, surely it was cheaper then?
Now, I know we have had a few greedy government rises in duty since then, all in the name of the protecting the enviroment, but surely its much higher in price now than it was in 2008.

Do you think, maybe, we are being ripped off??

 

It said on the news just the other day that prices in Europe had fallen, while ours keeps rising. So yes, I'm pretty sure we are being ripped off.

Roll on the day when we no longer need petrol for our cars. I know electric cars are out now but they're still rubbish. As with all things though, they'll get better over time. Our work has just had electric charging posts installed in 3 of our parking bays (out of about 300 bays in all), so its all happening

 

Tax has gone up a fair bit since then. (and VAT a bit too). And </sceptical> BP are having to pay for the mess in the Gulf

I feel strongly that the "in the name of the protecting the environment" is important, and you should not make light of it by attributing it to government greed. If you use up all the fuel in your generation there will be nothing left for the next & next-plus-one generations whilst they are figuring out how to solve the problem.

If you replace you car every 4 years (say) and buy a model that is significantly more fuel efficient each time then you will pay no more for fuel than you used to. I have adapted my driving style too (so called "hypermiling" which I would be the first to admit is not for everyone) and when I am concentrating hard I get 25% more MPG - that's equivalent to more than 10 years free motoring in a driving-lifetime )

In my view Petrol will be gone in 20 years. I don't hear government / pundits saying that, so maybe I have got it "well wrong", but I'm happy to share my maths if its not too boring / geeky for everyone.

 

I agree with you in principle, but in practice things are a bit different. The fuel duty and VAT just goes into the governments general pot, not necessarily used for environmental projects. Meanwhile many other countries are mocking Britain for our very poor progress on environmental issues. I remember our last boss, Tony Bliar banging on about how we were world leaders in environmental issues, yet when I visited a less developed Greek island I saw they were all using energy saving light bulbs and using solar water heaters, and reed beds to process much of their sewage. A skint little island that wasn't given much priority by their central government was just one big eco-project.

The government is clearly trying to reduce the number of cars on the roads, which is commendable in principle, but in practice there is little alternative. Public transport is a farce, and employers are still slow to pick up on the idea that for many jobs we can work from home nowadays.

I think you're right. In fact it's common sense. I also think that oil companies will get into serious difficulty unless they invest a good proportion of their profits into research for alternatives. There are two problems here though. Firstly, PLCs have a legal duty to act in the best interests of their shareholders, so that means profit has to come first by law. Secondly, you don't get to the top of a multinational corporation while you're still in your twenties. You have to be getting on a bit. If you're 50+ years old and know that in 50 years the world will be bust unless you change direction, what incentive have you got? Live out your last 20 or 30 years on yachts or driving ferraris, and grow old and die before everything goes bad, or make lots of wealthy enemies by blowing much of the profit on research, and live out the rest of your days like the average mortal.

 

I can remember being told when I learnt to drive in 1974 that I was wasting my time, as oil was running out and in a few years we would be back to using bikes again.:D

What better way of forcing up prices than telling us supplies are running out, although I dont doubt things could be getting a bit dodgy by now.

I've never been know to "make light" of government greed, I MEAN IT!!!!

If you replace your car every four years, if you can actually afford to do that, and we all did that, how much oil would we consume in the actual manufacture of all the new cars that would need to be built to fill the demand?

As to electric cars, well they tell us we dont have enough power stations as things are at the moment, let alone when we all plug our motors into the grid every night.

Sorry I cant get into work today,....we had a power cut last night.
That sounds like a good one, I might try that.:D

 

Whatever one's views regarding fuel prices, world oil production from 'economically recoverable' resources peaked in 2007. There are further already explored though not expoited reserves but these will cost more to extract and a few as yet undiscovered limited reserves. BUT world demand is increasing and prices will rise.
The only way the cost of driving a car in the UK will fall is via a reduction in fuel tax, and if that's a bad thing or good depends on one's view regarding conservation of resources for the next generation.

 

It would be nice if they ring-fenced it - but I'm apathetical(sp?) about government full-stop! but if "eco" is your target and thus you want to wean people off petrol raising the prices is one route (regardless of what you spend the tax on)

I have no opinion on that. I read THIS and also THAT in the papers. We have large wind farms in the North Sea. A few years ago I heard a minister challenged that we weren't doing enough, and he said we have much bigger capital projects than other countries and it would take time to see the benefit. Maybe he was truthful, maybe it was just Lies, Damned lies and Statistics ... but I don't really trust either viewpoint; I do think that following a single minded route (assuming not following a barking mad dictator!!) will do - single-minded progress "in the general direction" is good enough for me.

Not meaning to belittle the bits I have not quoted, but in fairness Solar is much better suited to more tropical countries. I have a large solar array on my house. Its "gain" is pretty pathetic relatively speaking. A cracking July day can give me 70+ kWh, but if I was in Greece I'd get that most days of the year. Alternative Energy is no Magic Bullet, sadly :(

Yup. Legacy of Maggie not wanting to have a comprehensive transport policy - in order not to be held to ransom by the Unions.

I don't quite understand why that is. 20 or more years ago re-investment was done, and I don't think the law (with regard to shareholders ) has changed. Much of the nation has become a service industry rather than manufacturing, so manufacturers who do produce something have to try to compete. "Greed culture" IMHO
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The problem is one of exponential growth. The "running out" bit, when you are increasing your consumption year-on-year, is very dramatic and sudden, and humans are not good at realising the impending doom when in that situation. (Thats assuming that my view that there is exponential growth, and there is a finite resource, are valid)

Sorry, I didn't mean a NEW car. If someone buying a new car improves their MPG from, say, 40 MPG to 60 MPG and they sell their car to someone who's previous car was doing 30 MPG then the increased economy trickles down the food chain.

Folk who have always had a Range Rover, and insist on replacing it with a Range Rover, don't get much sympathy from me (unless they have a need for that vehicle)

10 years ago I had a whizzy sports car that did 20 MPG or there abouts. I am now disappointed if I don't get 60MPG

I have a VERY simplistic view on that. When recycling came in we were asked to put our recycling in a Pink bin liner which was chucked in the dustcart with all the other rubbish. I have no idea if they separated it out, or not. BUT it was necessary to get the populus to separate their rubbish before spending billions on building a recycling plant. (I think the next step was that all our recycle rubbish was put on a boat to China for recycling :o ... but now our region has one of the best recycling plants in the country). If we all have electric battery vehicles, and we are building Wind farms etc. a the same time, then the current electricity grid will be carrying "green" electricity at some point in the future. (But there aren't enough rare-earth metals in the earth's crust to make the batteries for all the cars on the planet - so that isn't going to work in practice ...)[hr]
Here's the maths

1) "Petrol" consumption worldwide is increasing at 3.5% p.a. (I'm guessing a figure, by all means substitute your own). China + Indian growing aspirations; growing population; more and more gadgets that need Electricity (UK households use 2x the electricity compared to 20 years ago)

2) That rate of growth has been going on since day-one of "Petrol" discovery. (Its not an unreasonable assumption, excluding a few years here-and-there of recession / Suez crisis etc).

3.5% growth means that in 20 years you will be using twice as much as you are today.

(If you pick a different figure then the doubling-period is found by diving 70 by your figure - 1% compound doubles every 70 years [that's the current worldwide population growth], 10% would double in 7 years)

3) A continuous exponential growth, from day one, means that in the next doubling period you will use as much as you have EVER used IN TOTAL in the past.

So ... if we have got exactly to the half-way point of oil extraction (up for debate, but most people say we are there, or there-abouts, or "we have had the easy half already") then we have 20 years left.

Lets say we find some more oil. How much do we need?

Lets assume in 19 years and 11 months :D we find a big deposit of oil. If it is as much as all the oil we have ever used at that time (which is twice as much as we have used to date, today) then it will last us another 20 years. I can't see us finding "as much as there ever was" - let alone finding that much every 20 years ...

In my humble opinion we need to reduce our energy usage all we can - otherwise maintaining our lifestyle is going to be increasingly difficult.

 

Whilst I agree that a stable price would help people "plan", and great jumps in price because of speculators are a blessed nuisance, any reduction in the price will just mean that what is there is used up faster. Personally I think we need prices rising 10% above inflation so that we all wean ourselves off oil and make it worthwhile for companies to come up with alternatives. Painful though that is.
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"10% above inflation" will mean the price doubles in 7 years if inflation is 0%, and 5 years if inflation is 3% :(

 

I agree, the whole think stinks.

Rising oil prices will stimulate research into alternatives. It would be better than government had got the research underway decades ago so that rising prices weren't the solution (or so that an alternative was in place by now) - but they didn't - business as usual: too little, too late. Too many greedy, vested interest.

 

Who says petrol prices are high? I will moan with the best of you about what it costs. But the real test is what people do not what they say. And what are people doing - buying great big gas guzzlers. If the price of petrol was high we would all be running about in 1 litre cars or less doing 120 mpg. :th_scifD36:

 

I will never understand the science or the politics behind these horrendously high prices.What angers me though is that in our area Asda that is 10 miles away is 5p a litre cheaper than BP that is one mile away......:th_scifD36:

 

Armandii - you are not disagreeing with me. :WINK1: I think prices are high, but I think a lot of people act as if they were not. I think that it is highlighting the problems of the wealth divide. Perhaps its time we had our own revolution here.