Hard-pressed motorists are calling on BP to slash petrol prices after the firm posted £3.2billion quarterly profits.
One fuel protest group threatened “direct action” against BP if it does not cut prices.
The warning came as the national average for unleaded soared to 136p per litre. Diesel is now at 140p.
Shell is expected to eclipse BP with £4bn profit for April-June, meaning the pair make £80m a day between them.
Pressure group Stop The UK Petrol Rip-off said: “We were shocked to learn that BP and Shell are making billions while our 600,000 members are struggling with increasing fuel prices.
tinyurl.com/4ylottp - links to The Daily Star. No looking at the girlie links while at work please.
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Your link doesn't seem to work, Dave.
None of the girls in Video Vixens had anything at all to say about petrol prices, I know because I went through the lot twice.
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As usual these tabloid articles fail to point out the profit margin that these results indicate, and just use the headline figure to suggest that they are a greedy oil company.
The $5.7 billion profit is after tax ($9 billion before tax) on sales of $103 billion dollars, and costs of $94 billion dollars.
In other words they make $5.7 billion after tax for every $94 billion they spend, or 6%.
I wonder how much of a discount their customers expect them to give. Perhaps they want BP to turn into a charity.
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There was someone on 5Live today who said that the big villian isnt the oil companies but the government.
They made mention of the fact that less fuel is being bought so the tax could be lowered somewhat to bring up demand and the tax revenue would be the same.
Of course, if we need to reduce our oil depenancy then this is the only direction its going to go anyway...
Last edited by: FoR on Wed 27 Jul 11 at 14:30
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I was without the car during june/july and i thought i would save some money....how wrong i was, for eg. me and swmbo had to go to the doctors one particular day, one bus into town and one bus out a round trip of about 18 miles....there wasnt much change from a £20, i couldnt believe it and to make things worse, what was a 25 minute drive to the doctors became a 2 hour ball ache
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"what was a 25 minute drive to the doctors became a 2 hour ball ache"
Why, did he have really cold hands?
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sitting on a crowded bus next to some old codger in a damp coat making his own gravy aint my idea of a fun day out
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Cutting back car use is common sense. Now lets say I had to go to Bury, its about 30 minute drive on the motorway (14 miles), 50 minute drive on the normal roads (10 miles) or 35-40 minutes on the tram. In that situation for me the tram is far better than driving.
Now lets say I had to get to a place called Woodhouse park, it would take well over an hour on the bus, would cost me £3.70 return and would involve at least two buses. Or I could drive and it takes 20 minutes, the car clearly wins.
Cutting back on car use isn't about not using the car at all, it is about looking at which journeys if any might be cheaper and practical by public transport or other methods.
I recently went to a classic car show, I could have driven or got the bus, but as I didn't need to go pick anything up the 7.5 mile round trip was best done on my bush bike.
Every week I use the following modes of transport:-
Car - 80-100 miles a week
Bus - 3.5 miles (home on a Saturday night)
Tram - 20 miles
bush bike - 5 miles
Walking - 10 miles
Train - anything from 0 to 300+.
I am very lucky I have all options, I would have find life very hard without my car, but that said there are many journeys where I would much rather take a crowded tram in rush hour.
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City dwellers have almost no concept of what public transport is like outside of their city bubbles where theres enough people to run useful services.
They have no place preaching, not everyone has all day to post a letter.
:-)
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I have travelled all over the country using public transport. And yes there were places I could not get to because the transport didn't go there. I waited up to 45 minutes to turn up in North Wales, so I know how crap many rural services are.
But that there is too many people in cities who just take the car no matter what, and sometimes I have been guilty of that.
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It's hard to call the article journalism as it's ignorant, unresearched and carp...
Oh yes, It's popular journalism.. no phones to hack..
No need to say further...
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Missed this in the original report
"High fuel prices and other costs have forced seven out of 10 mothers off the road, according to a study by tyre firm Bridgestone."
So not all bad then ;o)
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6% margin looks a bit low to me. I imagine they are looking for more - I know I would be
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BP makes its money out of the upstream business ie getting the oil out of the ground. Refining margins are slim to non-existant. Of the £1.40 pump price, 57.95p is Duty, 23.33p is VAT is total tax of 81.28p. There's not much scope for reducing the price outside of HMG - and then if they did that other taxes would need to rise. HMG needs your money - fuel or income take your pick (or be forced to pay up!).
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For BP or Shell to cross subsidize their retail business from the profits made on oil extraction, the shareholders (i.e. our pension funds!) would go ballistic. No doubt there would be legal action etc etc.
As rightly pointed out, look to the government to ease the pain, they're the ones taking the vast majority of the pump price out of your pocket and into their coffers to pay for the rescue of aberrant banks and the like.
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LOL.
Petrol companies make no real money at forecourts on selling petrol.
There's probably more profit for them in that bottle of water you buy than in the tank of petrol.
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My BIL has two petrol stations and makes all his money on the shops. So he says.
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Having had this discussion recently with a petrol station owner on a model railway forum, net profit margin on petrol sales is around 2p per litre, so they do indeed rely on drink/sweetie/magazine sales to keep going.
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Thu 28 Jul 11 at 14:46
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Call for BP to lower fuel prices - Robin O'Reliant
