Any - Fuel prices

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Mon 28 Aug 2023 18:56
Any - Fuel prices - mcb100
Anyone else noticed petrol and diesel prices creeping up recently?
It’s being blamed in distribution issues caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that we haven’t imported any from Russia this year. And supermarkets holding onto a greater margin on fuel sales.
But we have bought 6.2 million barrels of jet fuel from India, which came from Russia…
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Mon 28 Aug 2023 19:43
Any - Fuel prices - madf

World oil consumption growing 1% Pa.

Major oil companies in West not investing.

OPEC cutting output

Perfect scenario for large increases in future.

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Mon 28 Aug 2023 19:47
Any - Fuel prices - RT
Anyone else noticed petrol and diesel prices creeping up recently? It’s being blamed in distribution issues caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite the fact that we haven’t imported any from Russia this year. And supermarkets holding onto a greater margin on fuel sales. But we have bought 6.2 million barrels of jet fuel from India, which came from Russia…

Difficult to separate out - but some of it is directly due to the purchase of Asda by the Issa brothers who own Euro Garages / EG Group and their decision for Asda to stop being the leading discounter.

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Mon 28 Aug 2023 19:58
Any - Fuel prices - Adampr

Creeping up by about 10% in the last fortnight....

OPEC playing silly b*****s.

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Mon 28 Aug 2023 20:13
Any - Fuel prices - Smileyman

That's more tax revenue for the Government!

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 10:01
Any - Fuel prices - madf

That's more tax revenue for the Government!

Like all Governments they will waste it :-)

( MP's leaving bonus has just doubled.. so they need to pay for that.. Got to look after themselves:-)

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 11:19
Any - Fuel prices - John F

I cannot understand why air car and bus fuel isn't taxed at least as much as ground car and bus fuel.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 11:29
Any - Fuel prices - Engineer Andy

Creeping up by about 10% in the last fortnight....

OPEC playing silly b*****s.

The odd thing is that the £ - $ value is the same or even slightly better than it was a few months ago (even after sliding from a year high of over $1.30), similarly the oil price has slipped back to what it was before OPEC redcued output.

When the oil price was nearer $90 a barrel, the £ was worth much nearer that top end against the $.

Something odd is going on (again).. If things were normal, the price at the pums would have spiked a small amount and would now be going down to the £1.40 ish level it was a month or so ago.

I wait with baited breath to see if prices come back down over the next week or two,m but I somehow doubt they will do, excuses ready to be offered by the PR people, etc, etc.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 11:37
Any - Fuel prices - Andrew-T

<< I wait with baited breath to see if prices come back down ... >>

What are you hoping to catch ? :-)

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 11:53
Any - Fuel prices - Bromptonaut

Something odd is going on (again).. If things were normal, the price at the pums would have spiked a small amount and would now be going down to the £1.40 ish level it was a month or so ago.

I read somewhere reasonably reliable that while pump prices and crude oil $/barrell obviously bear some relationship other factors are also in play. Something along the lines of....

What we pay at the pump is directly driven by spot prices for the refined product; for motoring this is obviously petrol or diesel. They can be up and down both collectively and in relation to one another depending on quite short term factors.

Diesel is a similar refining fraction to domestic heating oil. When demand for that goes up in the Northern winter diesel follows. Petrol has a usage pattern to rising sharply when the US have a summer 'driving season'.

I'm not saying we're not being stitched up by OPEc, big oil and our own governments but other factors are in the mix too.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 13:06
Any - Fuel prices - Brit_in_Germany

Having just returned from the UK, I am wondering what all the fuss is about. Having paid around GBP 1.40/litre, this was substantially less than I paid in France where petrol was EUR 1.90, or just over GBP 1.60/litre. This is also the price in Germany. The price in Luxembourg, renowned as a 'cheap' place for fuel, is about the same as the UK price.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 13:31
Any - Fuel prices - Engineer Andy

Having just returned from the UK, I am wondering what all the fuss is about. Having paid around GBP 1.40/litre, this was substantially less than I paid in France where petrol was EUR 1.90, or just over GBP 1.60/litre. This is also the price in Germany. The price in Luxembourg, renowned as a 'cheap' place for fuel, is about the same as the UK price.

£1.40 was the price about 2-3 weeks ago. My locals have gone up to about £1.53 for petrol and a penny or two more for diesel.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 13:37
Any - Fuel prices - Engineer Andy

Something odd is going on (again).. If things were normal, the price at the pums would have spiked a small amount and would now be going down to the £1.40 ish level it was a month or so ago.

I read somewhere reasonably reliable that while pump prices and crude oil $/barrell obviously bear some relationship other factors are also in play. Something along the lines of....

What we pay at the pump is directly driven by spot prices for the refined product; for motoring this is obviously petrol or diesel. They can be up and down both collectively and in relation to one another depending on quite short term factors.

Diesel is a similar refining fraction to domestic heating oil. When demand for that goes up in the Northern winter diesel follows. Petrol has a usage pattern to rising sharply when the US have a summer 'driving season'.

I'm not saying we're not being stitched up by OPEc, big oil and our own governments but other factors are in the mix too.

I'm sure some of these do factor in, but it's now coming to the end of summer but still before the autum heating season kicking in. Odd why the price suddenly jumped nearly 10% in two weeks, despite other factors not seeming to change or overall(i.e. oil price dropping back whilst £ dropping, by roughly the same)

I could certainly understand it if the price of diesel picked up in late Sept / early Oct as the heating season slowly kicks in, but at the moment, the price differential (even with our washed-out, relatively cool summer this year) is still small, often within 1-3p per litre of petrol.

And other cost factors to our benefit should also be kicking in more and more, such as reduced gas and electricity costs, and yet....

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 14:41
Any - Fuel prices - Terry W

For most of May-July Brent Crude was trading at ~$74 per barrel. This has now increased to ~$84 per barrel.

The £:$ exchange rate has also moved against the UK - from a peak in the middle of July of $1.31 to $1.26 today would add 1-2p per litre.

Why the increase - OPEC, holiday season, refining capacity - who knows and it doesn't really matter - markets rule.

Each barrel has 164 litres - simplistically ignoring all other factors bar exchange rate and crude price, the price per litre would rise by 7-8p.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 16:48
Any - Fuel prices - Andrew-T

Each barrel has 164 litres - simplistically ignoring all other factors bar exchange rate and crude price, the price per litre would rise by 7-8p.

Google says 159 litres (approx) or 42 gallons, which presumably are US gallons, not those we are used to ?

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 17:45
Any - Fuel prices - Bromptonaut

Why the increase - OPEC, holiday season, refining capacity - who knows and it doesn't really matter - markets rule.

That's the summary I think. Only caveat from me is the extent to which the supermarkets seem less keen than they were to cut each other's throats.

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Tue 29 Aug 2023 19:10
Any - Fuel prices - Terry W

Supermarkets generally get a bad press in my opinion.

Operating margins are currently ~2%, down from 3-5% pre pandemic. Whilst chief executives and senior managers are well rewarded they are not syphoning off vast amounts relative to profits or sales.

In context - the CE of Tesco is reported as being paid (earning??) £4.4m. This is equal to about £12 for each of the 350,000 employees and ~20p for each Clubcard holder.

I suspect supermarket pricing is in large part driven by the media -

  • report profiteering on fuel and they reduce prices,
  • focus on the cost of essential food items - out of a hat comes the economy but full of goodness range,
  • accusations of profiteering on bog rolls and the price of toilet tissue comes down.

It is a zero sum game - the profit needs to come from somewhere - squeeze one element and it just pushes the problem elsewhere. This week the locu of focus is fuel pricing!!

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Wed 30 Aug 2023 13:17
Any - Fuel prices - Engineer Andy

For most of May-July Brent Crude was trading at ~$74 per barrel. This has now increased to ~$84 per barrel.

The £:$ exchange rate has also moved against the UK - from a peak in the middle of July of $1.31 to $1.26 today would add 1-2p per litre.

Why the increase - OPEC, holiday season, refining capacity - who knows and it doesn't really matter - markets rule.

Each barrel has 164 litres - simplistically ignoring all other factors bar exchange rate and crude price, the price per litre would rise by 7-8p.

Did you take into account that fuel duty, which makes up over a third of the price, has not changed? Even so, prices in my area have gone up by 10-12p a litre.

Perhaps with slightly 'better' weather (compared to the July and early Aug washout and unseasonably low temperatures [my home heating ticked on at this time - in East Anglia]) some of the filling stations - especially those on holiday routes - decided to up prices during the staycation getaway after many changed their plans from the 'hot and firey' Continent.

Let's hope that the recent drop / levelling off of the oil price will soon be refelcted at the pums, given that prices dramatically rose (several times over a week or so) recently.

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Wed 30 Aug 2023 14:05
Any - Fuel prices - Bromptonaut

HMG should be onto this with some sort of regulation to make sure (a) the market works as theory says it should and (b) the public have the facts they need to understand when as it often does, it seems to be acting counter intuitively.

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Wed 30 Aug 2023 15:01
Any - Fuel prices - Andrew-T

<< ... some of the filling stations - especially those on holiday routes - decided to up prices during the staycation getaway after many changed their plans from the 'hot and firey' Continent. >>

I suppose some may have done, but profiteering at filling stations is pretty short-lived, as motorists soon discover what is going on, especially with help from eager websites. The only place it seems to work permanently is on the motorway or very close to it.

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