Fuel price discussion thread (was ‘chaos’)

Around here around 145 petrol / 150 diesel...however travelling down a41 yesterday there was a texaco at 135/140! wish i hadn't filled up a couple of days ago. Don't know if they have just had a fresh delivery and prices are coming back down, or was just an anomaly?

They usually are a bit cheaper when i've passed but not by that factor.
 
When you say you wish you hadn't filled up a couple of days ago, presumably you weren't running on fumes if you could have gone on another couple of days including A-road driving. So depending on what car you have lets say 50L fillup, saving 10p would mean a £5 saving. Not massive numbers, it would only be if you were consistently filling up at an overpriced petrol station that it would start to bite. £5 is the sort of amount most people don't bat an eyelid at, you can easily spend that based on what choice of wine you have in a restaurant, one pint in the pub etc.

muon said:
Let's say petrol prices reach 200p, will people still drive as much? I don't think they have much choice.
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The 'issue' (maybe wrong word) is that petrol prices never go up enough to really make a proper difference, like it would if it was £10+ a litre. We need a decent rise to really make a significant change in enough people's behaviours, for a lot of people whether it is £50 or £90 to fill their tank it won't change anything because they value the freedom of driving too much. If it was say £500 a tank then it would make a lot more people think about if they really needed to make a journey by petrol car or if there was an alternative. There's obviously a bunch of other impacts this would have on goods transport etc, the idea of people just ordering whatever they want online and having a courier turn up the next day for free might go out the window.

https://www.racfoundation.org/data/volume-petrol-diesel-consumed-uk-over-time-by-year
If you look here, fuel consumption is broadly flat since 1990 (ignoring the 2020 pandemic year) around 47(+/- 2) bn litres, despite peaks in fuel prices during that period ( http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/petrolprices.html - note how petrol cost over 50% more in 2013 compared to 2009) and improvements in fuel economy.

There might be a point in the future where ICE vehicles are being phased out, oil production is ramped down and economies of scale are reduced, whereby petrol becomes more of a luxury with most people driving affordable electric vehicles, but that's some way off.
 
I paid 171 for a litre of VPower diesel. I’d not normally use VPower diesel but I was empty and that was all they had!

Currently at an airport heading east. Gonna have a word with this Putin geezer, Ronnie Pickering style!
 
Housey said:
I paid 171 for a litre of VPower diesel. I’d not normally use VPower diesel but I was empty and that was all they had!

Currently at an airport heading east. Gonna have a word with this Putin geezer, Ronnie Pickering style!
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Over €2 on the other side of the pond. Honestly never thought I'd see that outside of the Netherlands and Norway :(
 
Gotta get used to this, electric gas petrol etc, gonna get expensive.

Good news is I'm not seeing any fuel shortage or panick buying.
 
Housey said:
I paid 171 for a litre of VPower diesel. I’d not normally use VPower diesel but I was empty and that was all they had!

Currently at an airport heading east. Gonna have a word with this Putin geezer, Ronnie Pickering style!
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Boom, right in the letterbox.

I did give a big fat :rolleyes: at the advisory fuel rates I'm now stuck with for the next 3 months. The cheapest places around here are already 5ppl more than the HMRC's "average" fuel cost.
 
Just reading a article that oil prices are predicted to hit $146 within 14-21 days if this continues, and fuel prices in will follow in tow, with a predication that Petrol will hit £1.77+ a litre by the end of March. If it goes the other way an things calm down, then the sanctions that are still in place will still cause the prices to stay where they are at best, or slowly get worse due the EU based countries distancing themselves from Russia even further.

Basically don't expect fuel to drop below £1.50 per litre in the near future, if at all.
 
Journey said:
Just reading a article that oil prices are predicted to hit $146 within 14-21 days if this continues, and fuel prices in will follow in tow, with a predication that Petrol will hit £1.77+ a litre by the end of March. If it goes the other way an things calm down, then the sanctions that are still in place will still cause the prices to stay where they are at best, or slowly get worse due the EU based countries distancing themselves from Russia even further.

Basically don't expect fuel to drop below £1.50 per litre in the near future, if at all.
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Good job my commute is halved starting next month. That means I might actually break even :cry:.
 
adam cool dude said:
Good job my commute is halved starting next month. That means I might actually break even :cry:.
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It's the knock on effect for HGV's and goods supply that will be the issue that hits everyone though. It's a shame we didn't keep our high quality rail transport network in use, instead of having to rely on HGV's for the whole delivery system not just the last mile equivalent.
 
Journey said:
Just reading a article that oil prices are predicted to hit $146 within 14-21 days if this continues, and fuel prices in will follow in tow, with a predication that Petrol will hit £1.77+ a litre by the end of March. If it goes the other way an things calm down, then the sanctions that are still in place will still cause the prices to stay where they are at best, or slowly get worse due the EU based countries distancing themselves from Russia even further.

Basically don't expect fuel to drop below £1.50 per litre in the near future, if at all.
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The problem is OPEC are refusing to ramp up supply.

They have most countries over a barrel (no pun intended), it's not like we can say we'll refuse to purchase from you if you don't increase production - every countries economy has a reliance on oil to function.
 
Semple said:
The problem is OPEC are refusing to ramp up supply.

They have most countries over a barrel (no pun intended), it's not like we can say we'll refuse to purchase from you if you don't increase production - every countries economy has a reliance on oil to function.
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I know.
 
people don't seem to moderate their speed despite the fuel prices (russian convoy excepted) - not sure if google tracks urban speeds;
hmmh - WFH to avoid car use, vs using the office heating.
 
jpaul said:
people don't seem to moderate their speed despite the fuel prices (russian convoy excepted) - not sure if google tracks urban speeds;
hmmh - WFH to avoid car use, vs using the office heating.
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I did my last work trip with the cruise set to bang on 70. The speed I can live with but what really annoyed me was the constant cycle of catch up to a car, pull out to overtake, car on inside speeds up, car on inside pulls level with your car and sits there, Audi / Volvo XC#0 appears and sits 12.4mm off your rear bumper. Rinse and repeat for a few hundred miles.

I'll go back to having the cruise set at around 75-79 simply to avoid that issue in future and live with the economy loss.
 
lordrobs said:
I did my last work trip with the cruise set to bang on 70. The speed I can live with but what really annoyed me was the constant cycle of catch up to a car, pull out to overtake, car on inside speeds up, car on inside pulls level with your car and sits there, Audi / Volvo XC#0 appears and sits 12.4mm off your rear bumper. Rinse and repeat for a few hundred miles.

I'll go back to having the cruise set at around 75-79 simply to avoid that issue in future and live with the economy loss.
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Is it not feasible to just do 65 mph in a different lane? Over the course of 100 miles the 5mph difference is 7 minutes, or 1h 32m vs 1h 25m. Do you know the efficeincy difference in the vehicles at various speeds? So 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80 mph?
 
Journey said:
Is it not feasible to just do 65 mph in a different lane? Over the course of 100 miles the 5mph difference is 7 minutes, or 1h 32m vs 1h 25m. Do you know the efficeincy difference in the vehicles at various speeds? So 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80 mph?
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I'm having flashbacks of my speed awareness course :rolleyes: The guys eyes lit up when I answered the leading question of "so how much time did you think you would save?" by saying. I don't know, 25 minutes maybe? I let him do his comparisons for time over distance and he looked towards me for my moment of revelation to point out that I underestimated as I was travelling from Norwich to Carmarthen :rolleyes:

Anyway... a more useful comparison of 65 mph against my usual cruising speed over the distance of my actual journey gives a time difference of a more substantial 37 minutes.

As for the efficiency of my car at 55 or 60 mph that is pretty irrelevant as I don't want to spend hours of my life sandwiched between 44 Ton trucks who seem to think that their braking distance is 1/3 of that of a car.

Apologies for the off topic...
 
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