kenneal - lagger wrote:
It's not worth making a special journey of ten to fifteen miles each way to save a couple of quid but if I've got to go anyway I'll fill up. That's what they are relying on to keep the price high.
If you get about £100 worth in, then your tank is 12 to 15 gallons, which means you would save £2.30 to £2.50ish on a tank full. I don't think the price is "high" in Newbury, as I suspect the costs of running a site in a built up area are higher than in a more remote place (business rates and insurance for example). Fuel retailers don't make much on fuel as I understand it, and rely on their associated convenience shop to make it a viable business. How they make anything out of me I don't know, as I rarely buy anything other than fuel.
The cost of fuel in Newbury is 4p per litre more than in Swindon, Basingstoke, Winchester or Reading, all built up areas. Even our MP is complaining and running a local cost comparison page on his website.
You can't buy fuel in the countryside now except on a very busy main road.
A tanker loaded with 60,000 tonnes of Russian crude oil destined for the struggling Coryton refinery has anchored in the Thames Estuary for five days awaiting payment for its cargo.
The refinery is scrambling to raise the cash to pay for the contents of the Lian Xing Hu, which left Novorossiysk on the Black Sea 26 days ago.
Coryton resumed deliveries of petrol, diesel and jet fuel following a two-day suspension after administrators Pricewaterhouse (PwC) redrew contracts with its biggest customers, BP and Texaco, allowing payment to go directly to the refinery. They had previously gone to Petroplus, the refinery's Swiss parent, which filed for insolvency this week.
Yesterday's developments came as a French prosecutor opened an investigation into whether Petroplus illegally withdrew funds from its French unit before filing for insolvency.
Police raided the headquarters of the group's French subsidiary – Petroplus Marketing Finance – in Paris yesterday, about an alleged transfer of €100m (£83.6m) out of the company's bank account prior to the filing.
Tarrel wrote:So, if 2008 was the first (in the 21st century) year of the bank bail-outs, will 2012 be the year of the refinery bail-outs?
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Any bailing out of refineries with public money might turn out to be even more controversial than the bank bailouts.
Despite refineries running at a loss, it is widely believed by the motoring lobby that huge and wicked profits are made at the expense of the hapless motorist.
I can forsee demands for cheaper petrol "we the people own the refinery, so should get cheap petrol"
There would also be calls for subsidised road fuel according to social need, for claiments, for the disabled, for large families, and so on.
"a publicly owned refinery should surely be able to assist the most vulnerable"
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
Isnt going to happen. All oil exporting countries are building refineries and exporting finished products. They can undercut any overseas refineries and when all the overseas refineries have all closed the price of all refined prodcuts will go through the roof.
Most refineries are being built with the help of Chinese money and the payment is in refined prodcuts at knock down prices.
ziggy12345 wrote:Isnt going to happen. All oil exporting countries are building refineries and exporting finished products.
Indeed, the crazy thing is how long it's taken for this to happen. Why sell a barrel of oil, when a barrel of petrol is more profitable. That's only the tip of the hydrocarbon value chain.
