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Bit of a red herring when most of the price is tax.
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Its a definite cartel round here, no doubt about it.
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>> Its a definite cartel round here, no doubt about it.
>>
Our local price is fixed by government.
Goes up at midnight on the first Wednesday of the month - ie today.
94c a litre today. OUCH!
About 9%.
But some of that is because the (compulsory) petrol jockeys have a new wage increase.
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The Cartel seems to have been broken round here, as ASDA are not a part of it, that means the local Tesco Esso now try to match ASDA. So in my town is a very coruius situation where all the petrol stations are charging 139.9P while the Tesco Esso is 131.9p for unleaded! You can guess which one causes the traffic jams!.
I made a thread about cartels about a year ago. The odd thing is until recently the Esso seemed to be the same price as the other local ones, but lately they seem to be matching ASDA.
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Anyone see the corresponding report on the ITV 6:30 news this evening (first item)? They said that in £1.30 litre of petrol there's 48p's worth of petrol, 80p of tax and 5p for the retailer. Not sure where that extra 3p comes from...
Last edited by: Focus on Wed 5 Sep 12 at 19:38
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>> Anyone see the corresponding report on the ITV 6:30 news this evening (first item)? They
>> said that in £1.30 litre of petrol there's 48p's worth of petrol, 80p of tax and 5p for the retailer. Not sure where that extra 3p comes from...
>>
Fuel company's profit....
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>>Fuel company's profit....
I don't think so.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15462923
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">>Fuel company's profit....
I don't think so."
Of course, if people really believed that it was these fuel companies were so profitable, you would think that they would be rushing out and buying shares in BP.
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There's nothing more depressing, motoring-wise, than the mention of fuel prices.
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This is distraction politics and a complete waste of time and money as like supermarket reviews, nothing conclusive will be achieved - (and like fuel, UK policy on planning FORCES supermarkets to pay through the nose to develop sites: so the customer pays)
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>> This is distraction politics and a complete waste of time . . . the customer pays)
>>
And in this instance, the tax-payer will pay for the OFT's investigation.
But most of them will do so with great gratitude, because they have not twigged that they (or their grandchildren) will foot the bill, and they think that it might actually bring fuel prices down.
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I listened to the BBC on the subject. I would have thought they might have referred to the last report on supermarkets:
"The commission said that on most counts the groceries market delivered value,
choice, innovation and convenience. It found nothing to substantiate the more highly
coloured claims of unfair competition enabling supermarkets to prosper at the
expense of small shops. It also - rightly - rejected complaints that Tesco's dominance
as market leader prevented other large grocers from growing:"
tinyurl.com/c7q6xas (PDF download).
This was the third in 10 or so years and a complete waste of money..
But no, the BBC produced a report on the fuel enquiry which reported with wide eyed enthusiasm... I suppose they have to be independent but even so..
I conclude most BBC reporters are either ignorant . or naive .. or both OR the aftermath of the Gilligan enquiry still has long tentacles
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>> I conclude most BBC reporters are either ignorant . or naive .. or both OR
>> the aftermath of the Gilligan enquiry still has long tentacles
Or they have an inbuilt bias against the private sector (e.g. fuel companies) and in favour of the public sector (the OFT), and they report stories in a way which is designed to encourage a similar outlook.
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Is there any other supermarket commodity apart from fuel where prices are set locally. Advertising suggests not. Other than in city centre metro/express type stores the price of cereal, baked beans is the same at every Tesco, Sainbury etc in England - may be different in Scotland.
So why is fuel consistently 3-4p a litre more expensive in Northampton than in Leicester or Kettering? I can't believe distance from refinery or depot is a factor, indeed there's a large, pipeline supplied, BP depot in Northampton.
In my view the factor is Asda which does set a national price for fuel. There is no Asda with a forecourt in Northampton and Tesco/Morrison/Sainsbury are within a penny of each other.
Lack of real competition??
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in a word - cartel
If they can rip off joe public they will.
These supermarkets can easily tell if sales of fuel go down and at which garage, then change the price to get more of the public buying fuel / possibly going into their shops to buy more.
swings and roundabouts I guess but at the end of the day they just experiment to see how much your happy being ripped off.
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Rubbish: not a cartel.
Just limited competition. Remember the number of outlets selling fuel has dropped by nearly 2/3rds due to declining margins:
tinyurl.com/66qzexp
So limited supply in an area.
All talk of retailer exploitation on petrol is largely rubbish.
If it was so profitable, the number of retailers would be rising.
So the OFT are doing what they do best: wasting their time and our money.
Recent OFT failures include:
BA fraud trail...tinyurl.com/bszxsoc
Supermarkets : see above
Doing nothing on UK car cartels pricing for decades.(now that was a proper cartel worth £billions)
Last edited by: madf on Thu 6 Sep 12 at 12:44
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>>Remember the number of outlets selling fuel has dropped by nearly 2/3rds due to declining margins: tinyurl.com/66qzexp
15 years ago, there were 6 petrol stations within 25 miles of me. Today there are 3.
Previous spot in rural Scotland where I lived, saw the number of petrol stations go from 4 to 1 in about a decade.
" The drop doesn't come from a lack of demand due to automotive fuel choices but because of, "increasing fuel taxes, crude oil prices and business rates, as well as unfair pricing regimes from some hypermarkets and oil companies," which are working against independent stations, said Brian Madderson, chairman of the industry body RMI Petrol"
It is also true that more stringent regulation, particularly health and safety, has made life difficult for a lot of small rural petrol stations.
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>> It is also true that more stringent regulation, particularly health and safety, has made life
>> difficult for a lot of small rural petrol stations.
>>
Like double skinned fuel tanks to avoid the risks of leakage .. thus adding greatly to costs.
If petrol retailing was so profitable, why does every new station have a shop selling groceries etc?
Answer: cos the margins on them are several times that on petrol or diesel..
None of this needs a genius to see so clearly the OFT exercise is smoke and mirrors. And anyone who thinks otherwise?...
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Government enquiries have (IMHO) little effect.
3 years Scottish Govt enquiry into alcohol sales...........stopped sales like 3 bottles of wine for £10
This aggressive pricing was deemed to encourage excess drinking.
The week following the ban there were no 3 for £10 offers etc
Wine offer was £3.33 per bottle
I repeat
Government enquiries have (IMHO) little effect.
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>> Government enquiries have (IMHO) little effect.
>>
>> 3 years Scottish Govt enquiry into alcohol sales...........stopped sales like 3 bottles of wine for
>> £10
>>
>> This aggressive pricing was deemed to encourage excess drinking.
>>
>> The week following the ban there were no 3 for £10 offers etc
>>
>> Wine offer was £3.33 per bottle
>>
>> I repeat
>>
>> Government enquiries have (IMHO) little effect.
>>
>>
Well yes.
They are INTENDED to have little effect.
They are just an excuse for doing nothing and buying time.
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Last week the price of fuel in France went down by around 6 cents per litre, due to direct government intervention as Hollande fulfilled an election promise.
This week the price has gone up 3 cents again, due to normal market forces and looks set to rise further.
But taxpayers are going to have to go on paying for that short-lived subsidy. What was the point of political intervention?
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.
>> But taxpayers are going to have to go on paying for that short-lived subsidy. What
>> was the point of political intervention?
>>
To prove that Socialism does not work?
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Victory for petrol price campaign: Government orders watchdog to probe ‘City traders driving up cost at the pumps’
Yes it;s the Daily Mail
tinyurl.com/98y8sjg
A headline for morons..
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Not many petrol stations where i live. Go a Gulf station a mile away. Next is shell I think, at 11 miles then an independant at 27 miles. Nearest supermarket fuel is inverness Tesco or Moggies at around 89 miles each way.
HMG are wasting money on this review. Smoke and mirrors as prev.stated. If they wanted to do something they would drop VAT/reduce to the 5% level or adjust some other tax. But they don't want to, any of them, because they get a Truck load of income from the tax and they are desperate for it. Especially as cars get "greener" (awful term...almost as bad as using the word "Terror" instead of terrorism or terrorist!) and use less fuel.
rgds
Zuave.
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>> Especially as cars get
>> "greener" (awful term .....
I agree. Years ago I had a dark green car, and if it had got any greener it would have been black.
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Just so I can understand, does anyone know how much the tax has risen over the past 20 years? It seems that the pump price bears little to the price of a barrel of oil as it goes up and down, so I'm assuming that the tax has greatly increaded since I started driving in the early 80's.
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Tax has undoubtedly risen in absolute terms and as a % of the pump price.
On the other hand there's more to pre tax pump prices than crude cost at the well head or even at the refinery. Exchange rates, refinery capacity are but parts of the equation.
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Not a direct answer to your question, but this table petrolprices.co.uk is an intriguing illustration of the cost of petrol relative to the RPI.
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>> Not a direct answer to your question, but this table petrolprices.co.uk is an intriguing illustration
>> of the cost of petrol relative to the RPI.
>>
1. combine those inflation figures into a graph like this
news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/56520000/gif/_56520518_petrol_diesel_oil_464.gif
2. add in lines to show factors such as fuel duty and $:£ exchange rate
3. = result you want.
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Well of course, the attached analysis of refining pricing and capacity answers most of the questions.
Stand by for a 6 month very expensive exercise to say this:
ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/10/02/1187961/charting-the-refining-capacity-shortfall/
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Petrol and diesel price review - Stuu
