Petrol prices - competiton law

[Forestgate]

Did you realise that crude oil prices are similar to what they were in 2012? Yet petrol and diesel were never this costly at the pumps .

www.macrotrends.net/2516/wti-crude-oil-prices-10-year-daily-chart

Why is this?

is it just rhe service stations price gouging and profiteering! Taking advantage of people's expectations that prices are generally rising to charge more ar the pumps

How is this being allowed to happen????

YABU - there is another reason (please tell me!)

YANBU - oil companies profiteering at their worst (please write to your MP to complain!)

It's much more complicated than you have outlined or that anyone can explain on here but The Times has some good writing on this. They seem to be the only paper that takes an in-depth view of the market and what's going on with some of the operators - the EG Group for example.

Ok thanks - was wondering how they are getting away with daylight robbery
Could you link to article?

Because you're not buying crude oil, you're buying petrol or diesel, which has manufacturing and transport costs, and capacity issues at the moment.

www.lookers.co.uk/blog/how-is-the-cost-of-fuel-broken-down

With unleaded petrol currently at £1.67 per litre, here’s what you’re paying for:

% of the Total Cost What you pay per litre
Wholesale cost 33% 55p
Biofuel content 7% 11p
Retailer profit 8% 13p
Delivery costs 1% 2p
Fuel duty 35% 58p
VAT 17% 28p

The greedy bastards who control the refineries aren't helping with their huge increase in profits.

And if we paid for oil using dollars, this would be true. But we don't. We convert to dollars from pounds, and the pound sterling shat the bed the last few years (for... reasons).

Oil is at the most expensive it's been for many currencies on record this year. The American price spike in 2008 doesn't need to be met, because the depreciation of the pound, yen, euro etc. is making foreign buyers feel more pain.

Additionally, there are massive problems in distillate yields, so people will be paying a premium to get refiners to tool up to address these shortfalls.

Additionally, as global stockpiles of distillate are running below their 5-year moving average, there is the real threat of shortages of diesel in Europe and the US now. If that happens, price will either need to massively rise, or rationing will be introduced.

Diesel would have to be prioritised for HGVs and other heavy freight uses first.

Fuel duty is 53p a litre
Then we pay 20% VAT on top of both of that - including fuel duty

So at £1.90 a litre - 53p is fuel duty and 32p is VAT

So maybe the Government needs to look at its take

Because it’s a mafia. Everyone’s taking a cut. Most of all the treasury, to make up for some of the largesse during the ill thought out lockdowns.

Its good to see the myth being busted that all this is down to Ukraine. With the pointless, hysterical lockdowns, the money printing, and rampant corruption in the way public funds were handled, we are being forced to pay through taxation at the highest levels since WWW2. I hope this idiot of a prime minister and his puppet chancellor is ousted asap.

I admit I find it hard to gauge what people want eg before windfall tax many posts saying tax companies more, their profits are high

Now pp with the tax take is too high

This is a break down of who gets what, not sure what percentages people would like to see

www.opec.org/opec_web/en/data_graphs/333.htm

Re pp Ukraine has impacted prices globally but I’d like the costs of the pandemic to be recognised as a huge impediment

And everyone seemed keen on that spending with little opposition in public or gov

This was going to happen regardless. There isn't the capacity to keep growing oil output. The global all time oil production peak was, and still is, November 2018. Stagnant investment due to reduced CAPEX in the industry and the shale plays petering out and OPEC+ overpromising and underdelivering led to this. The pandemic and now Ukraine war simply add to the fire.

I was expecting this to happen since 2007, and told anyone who wanted to buy a huge car to reconsider. Now the time has come, and, well, I see more huge dumb vehicles on the road than ever and people crying over filling them up.

Especially egregious in America with their F-150s and >$5 gallon fuel now.

Liebig I can imagine some could see it and two world events have expedited what you thought re oil

As an aside looking around there’s a fair bit on commodity prices and the war,

amp.dw.com/en/how-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-rocked-commodity-markets/a-61235041

@MarshaBradyo Oh, make no mistake, people are certainly getting into bidding wars here and turning a healthy profit. The problem is the underlying supply is not going to radically change, so while profiteering is a thing, people expecting regulation to kick in and make stuff affordable again are in for a shock.

Remember the winter just past that the only reason we got gas in Europe was because we outbid most of Asia for LNG tankers. Those that lost out on the pricing war lost out on that gas.

Likewise for oil and food. The richer nations will have to foot larger bills, eating into discretionary expenditures as essentials take up more of the monthly budget. The poorer nations will do without.

Anyone who thinks petrol is bad now should look at the FAO food price index and see that we just blew past the prices that caused the Arab Spring of 2011. And this is without taking into account what's going down in Ukraine or the poor harvests in other producers this year.

For anyone thinking EVs are the answer, check out lithium prices lately. Energy goes up (fossil fuels) means everything gets more expensive. And we need those fossil fuels to even hope to build the infrastructure for EVs being a thing.

Even then, you're still exposed to high fuel costs simply because even having a Tesla or electric Porsche or something, your food and all else is still delivered via diesel HGVs and the vast majority of workers are using cars with ICEs. There will come a point when commuting is literally too expensive for many workers, which will be... interesting.

The data linked by OP shows a high of $109 in Sep 2013, and the current price is $122. Converting to £, in Sep 2013 price was £69.76 (0.64£/$) and now it is £98.82 (0.81£/$). That's a 42% higher price.

The cost of energy used to refine oil (it takes about 1kWh per litre to refine) will have shot up just like your domestic bills, and ironically, the diesel used by tankers to get it to your retailer has also increased in price. All these costs will go straight to the pump price.

I doubt very much that the refiners and retailers are making excess profits, but the primary extractors are raking in the profits.

This is fine.