Now, I have no answers, so I would appreciate what other, more knowledgable people think about the current fuel "crisis".

Yesterday I filled my car up, £65, now that is a HELL of a lot of money for a tank of fuel, and today, I noticed that it has gone up another 0.02p a litre, IN ONE DAY!!, it now costs me about 25% more than a couple of months ago.

It's getting mental, I know this is a worldwide issue, not just a UK one, although we still have one of the most expensive fuel costs in western Europe.

Likewise, I just looked into buying some more domestic heating oil, 60p a litre!!!, that is a 50% increase in a year!!.

Where will this all end?, is it purely down to the fact that oil is running out/getting harder to get, or is it something more sinister?.

How do we stop the rise?, can we stop the rise?, is driving going to become a luxury?, are we going to all have to go back to riding horse and carts?, what alternatives do we have?.

Certainly not a pleasent outlook IMO, so I would appreciate any cheerfull postings!!!

Mummble grumble can't afford it as a student grumble.

Also with the rising cost of fuel, so the cost of everything that relies on that is increased, such as food. I guess however this'll just mean the cost of living will increase significantly, and for that to happen successfully wages will have to increase (that's the only positive thing I could think of Dan :P).

Quote from pb32000 :

Mummble grumble can't afford it as a student grumble.

Also with the rising cost of fuel, so the cost of everything that relies on that is increased, such as food. I guess however this'll just mean the cost of living will increase significantly, and for that to happen successfully wages will have to increase (that's the only positive thing I could think of Dan :P).

Indeed, I have noticed a weekly grocery shop has gone up from about £40-50, to £60-70.

As for wages, not going to happen

I heard they reckon we'll be paying between £1.50 and £1.60 per litre by the end of the year (when I started driving, it was ~£0.70).

I agree it's depressing, it's currently costing me £350-£400 a month in fuel just to get to and from work (~1200 miles per month)

The biggest problem, as always, is a greedy gov. Most of the expense is tax.. yeah, oil prices have rocketed, but fuel could still be cheaper. The other seems to be greedy fuel companies. Around here, BP for example is a fair bit more expensive than anyone else. The BP garage round the corner is set at £1.15, the Total garage across the road is now £1.12, yet half a mile away in opposite directions, the BP garage is £1.17 and Total garage is £1.10.

Got a result the other day when the local Shell garage dropped the price back down to £1.06 but then 3 days later, back up to £1.09.

I don't think there's anything we can do unfortunately



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Ian.H :

I agree it's depressing, it's currently costing me £350-£400 a month in fuel just to get to and from work (~1200 miles per month)

Christ, I am not that bad, I am pushing about a tank in 3 weeks, but £350-400 a month, jesus

Quote from Ian.H :

The biggest problem, as always, is a greedy gov. Most of the expense is tax.. yeah, oil prices have rocketed, but fuel could still be cheaper. The other seems to be greedy fuel companies. Around here, BP for example is a fair bit more expensive than anyone else. The BP garage round the corner is set at £1.15, the Total garage across the road is now £1.12, yet half a mile away in opposite directions, the BP garage is £1.17 and Total garage is £1.10.

Is it though?, is it purely down to the tax?, I went to Paris a few weeks ago, and the fuel was roughly the same, maybe a little less than here, but not be anywhere near the amount it used to be

Quote from Ian.H :

I don't think there's anything we can do unfortunately

Unfortunately Ian, I think your right, people say we should strike, but I am not convinced it will change things.

People say we shouldn't buy fuel for one day, I don't think that will work either, all we'll do is buy the same amount the next day.

Think of it this way - the Oil Price douled in the last few months, and petrol prices went from around £0.95 -> £1.15, which is "only" a 20% increase.

I've just sold my 2.0 TDCI Mondeo and bought a 2.4 V6 Merc and put an LPG kit on it for the cost of selling mondeo. 54p / litre. It'll cost roughly the same running the merc as it does the mondeo.....!!!

Quote from mrfell :

54p / litre

for now

I reckon Australia comes close to taking the beef for the most expensive but thats another story, but i remeber the day in Aus it cost less then a dollar for a litre once it hit $1 biggest outrage and now this man we really are screwing over the earth ey.
But what can you do?

Quote from danowat :

for now

Bottom line is that lpg will (maybe??) never be as expensive as petrol / diesel as its a by product. So for the time being i'll enjoy the benefits. But yeah, eventually the Government will bugger it up!!

Quote from AstroBoy :

I reckon Australia comes close to taking the beef for the most expensive but thats another story, but i remeber the day in Aus it cost less then a dollar for a litre once it hit $1 biggest outrage and now this man we really are screwing over the earth ey.
But what can you do?

According to Google, one Australian dollar is €0,607. That's nothing compared to the €1,55 or so we have to pay here.

Quote from mrfell :

Bottom line is that lpg will (maybe??) never be as expensive as petrol / diesel as its a by product. So for the time being i'll enjoy the benefits. But yeah, eventually the Government will bugger it up!!

Diesel is a byproduct of petrol (correct me if I am wrong), and is cheaper to produce (again, correct me if I am wrong), and therefore should be (and was for a long time) cheaper than petrol.

The single reason diesel is now more expensive is supply and demand, if everyone jumped ship to LPG, the same would happen.

Quote from danowat :

Diesel is a byproduct of petrol (correct me if I am wrong), and is cheaper to produce (again, correct me if I am wrong), and therefore should be (and was for a long time) cheaper than petrol.

The single reason diesel is now more expensive is supply and demand, if everyone jumped ship to LPG, the same would happen.

OOps my bad!
Surely LPG is already in quite large demand as in heating etc....?
But as sure as eggs are eggs, once the major petrol stations get their sticky fingers on it the prices will go up. ATM IIRC the price of lpg is frozen till 2009/2010, then it'll rocket. Going from diesel at 120p/l to lpg at 54p/l is quite attractive.

Indeed, make the most of it while you can, I seem to remember the government said a few years ago that they would reduce (remove?) the duty on bio-diesel, never happened.

Ok, so other than LPG, what are our transport alternatives?, apart from human/beast power.

Quote from danowat :

Indeed, make the most of it while you can, I seem to remember the government said a few years ago that they would reduce (remove?) the duty on bio-diesel, never happened.

Ok, so other than LPG, what are our transport alternatives?, apart from human/beast power.

Teleportation, i'm working on it right now and might be onto something.......anyone fancy giving it a whirl?

Seriously tho, knowing the way we are, we will moan and groan and put up with the rediculous prices and continue to use the car.

The local fast food joint is hiring highschoolers at $10 an hour. If dollars are worth anything these days :P

I read that as a percentage of income, gas is cheaper now than it was when it was $.16 a gallon. There's an optimistic way of looking at it (if it's actually true)...

Quote from mrfell :

Seriously tho, knowing the way we are, we will moan and groan and put up with the rediculous prices and continue to use the car.

This is what I am driving (sic) at, what are the alternatives?.

I drive 15 miles each way every day, there is NO public transport that goes from where I live to work, sure, I could probably cycle or even run, but who wants to do that in the dead of winter?

They say the fuel companys heat up the fuel so it expands to save money and give out less litres of fuel then is really there.

Its true in Australia, some drivers even have heaters underneath the truck containers.

Makes you pissed off knowing that they charge you more for fuel. Makes you even more pissed off knowing your not getting that amount of fuel.

Quote from mrfell :

Bottom line is that lpg will (maybe??) never be as expensive as petrol / diesel as its a by product. So for the time being i'll enjoy the benefits. But yeah, eventually the Government will bugger it up!!

The government has the possibility to raise the cost of LPG whenever they want to. Fuel prices have very little to do with the actual fuel cost as much as tax (which is why we've got the sixth most expensive petrol in the world). Given the gradually increasing pressure against global warming/general green nonsense the government is probably going to have to back down on the green taxes at some point and currently cheap forms of fuel are an easy target.

the big thing that is helping stop the rise of lpg is it keeps the greenos happy cos it ' environmentally freindly'(in an extremly bitchy sarcastic voice), but the reason i like it is cos its on our/my range rover and means we can aford to run a 3.5 litre v8

Once again, Top Gear have a solution:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XtoPJD1XdRU

Filled mine up last week for £46, the highest it's ever been. Fortunately a tank of fuel lasts me three or four weeks as I only have a ten minute commute.

Nonetheless I can see how badly it affects those who have a long commute, and it's not going to get any better. What's going to happen is that as fuel costs escalate, it will gradually begin to affect our lifestyles.

We'll start living closer to where we work, and travelling less in general. Food produce should start to be produced locally for the supermarkets as the French do, rather than trucking it all to a central distribution centre, then trucking it back out again all over the country.

I once read that since the fifties, we've been having one big oil party - cheap, convenient energy that we're getting drunk on with large cars, driving longer distances, flying abroad for holidays, filling our homes with cheap consumer goods that consume cheap energy, building things from cheap plastics and transporting things from China where the labour is cheap and the shipping fuel oil is cheap... etc etc.

And it's all going to start to change, and it'll be like we're suffering the hangover the morning after. Not because the oil is running out (yet) but because the demand has shot up so much from places like India and China.

Nonetheless, 1 in 8 barrels of oil produced globally ends up in the fuel tank of an American motorist. Time to ditch the V8s, guys.

lol yh but also people say about biobiesel and bio ethanol being nice and green, which they are, but the green nutters are still moaning saying that forests would be have to be cut down to produce it which is utter b******* cos esecially in this country there are so many fields laying dormant that there is enough room, and the production of fuels from plants will also help save the farming industry, i also like ethanol cos if the engine is tuned right it can increase power significantly

oh and as you can see the green debate does get me a bit worked up sometimes lol

I currently pay about A$160 per week on fuel, this time last year I was averaging A$350 per week so I'm better off now