Fuel up/down again

Who uses oil as national grid supply. It accounts for less than 1.5% in the Uk and shrinking.
So will make sod all difference to solar/wind etc.
And country also want energy security so are unlikely to give up on cracking regardless of cost.

If you don't even know its called fracking not cracking then I don't think you understand enough to comment.
 
It's a loss leader, it's to get people to go to their store rather than Tesco or Morrisons or who ever, if you're just stopping for fuel then you just get cheap fuel. Shell and the like don't have supermarkets to get you into, they can't afford to sell the fuel for no margin or even less.

It's not a loss leader at 110p a litre. We don't know what the wholesale price of unleaded is right now but we do know for example that freight firms can buy in bulk at 87.6+VAT. Supermarkets almost certainly pay less but even if they didn't that would be a purchase price including VAT of 105.12p a litre.

So you are not buying 'inflated' groceries which pay for 'loss leader' fuel.

ASDA are typically as cheap as any other supermarket for groceries anyway.
 
That 5p a litre isn't profit to the supermarket though is it?

No, of course not - the expenses of retailing the fuel will also come out of it. We don't know what these are. They are unlikely to be 5p a litre though.

However this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15462923

Implies that the costs of retailing the fuel are less than 5p a litre.

If Tesco only sold fuel, would they sell at the price they do? No. They sell it at the price they do to attract customers into their stores to buy groceries.

Or perhaps they use the high levels of throughput as a result of the people shopping in the store to chase volume over margin when it comes to retailing fuel? There are likely to be numerous strategies at play - however blindly stating that fuel is a 'loss leader' to supermarkets is IMHO wrong - it probably isn't in most cases.

I just filled with diesel at BP for 116.9p a litre. Asda is 116.7p a litre and the nearest Sainsburys and Tesco are both 117.9p a litre. Crap loss leader that...

Supermarkets profit from retailing fuel.
 
Neither of those articles have quotes from supermarkets saying that. It's mostly anecdotal.

Supermarkets obviously do, at times, loss lead on fuel. But this is usually in a form of voucher promotions or similar. The current prices do not appear to demonstrate loss leading on the part of supermarkets.

Supermarkets will run very low margins but they'll also shift very high volumes as well, perhaps higher volumes than an independent could expect due to higher footfall.

You simply cannot categorically state as you did that the supermarkets are selling fuel at negative margin and that this is why some other garages cost more. There isn't enough evidence to suggest that.
 
they most certainly do run negative margin at times when they run the money off deals.

I know, I said that above?

But this discussion spawned from a question asking why Shell and BP were, in one persons area, more than supermarkets. Nothing to do with the voucher schemes which are obviously loss leaders.

At advertised pump price, supermarkets are making money retailing fuel. Perhaps not huge amounts of money, but money all the same.

There is a common misconception in this country that Supermarkets sell fuel at less than cost price because you might pop into the shop and buy beans and milk. This just isn't the case outside of specific promotions. The Supermarket PFS sites generate money for the business directly as well as indirectly through increased customer flow.
 
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You haven't though, your link shows typical margin (not profit) at 7.1p while currently it could actually be 5p, so less.

Read it again - it shows the retailer margin as being 4.7p on diesel. That includes the profit *and* the costs of retailing, therefore from that we can extrapolate that the cost of retailing a litre of fuel is less than 4.7p.

The fact that petrol had a retailer margin on 7.1p just means petrol was more profitable, it doesn't cost more money to retail petrol than it does diesel.

Just because it's called loss leading, doesn't mean stuffs actually sold at a loss by the way.

I will concede that technicality though :D

(Although most people when talking about this are under the impression its about below cost, ie that it represents a barrier to other market participants of matching the price. A loss leader will usually be below cost because it can be easily matched by others if its not, unless you have a particularly lean supply system).
 
For diesel?

Yes, for diesel.

Paid an effective price of £1.08 a litre last night using the Amex offer Jez is talking about.

116.9p a litre advertised price, £5 statement credit for every £50+ fill you make at BP.

I paid something like £65 for 60 litres :)
 
...then, after years of duty being frozen (falling in real terms), this decline in oil prices is the perfect time to increase duty, allowing it to catch up with inflation.

Or adhere to the spirit of tax rate harmonisation within the EU and leave it alone - we already have some of the most expensive fuels in the EU. The argument that it hasn't kept up with inflation is invalid - it should never have been as high as it was on the first place.

You of all people will know this is simply a temporary reprieve, the long term oil price trajectory is upwards. Fuel prices will be back where they were before within the medium term.
 
Whenever i get a Taxi it doesnt cross my mind what the car is going to be.

Does me which is why I avoid them wherever possible. Pot luck as to whether somebody picks you up in a clean, modern and well kept saloon or a banger with aftermarket rimz and yet the price is the same regardless. No thanks.

1.9 TDI VAG's are all very old now.
 
Contrary to popular opinion four star is still sold in this country, just in limited quantities and by a single retailer who has the contract to supply it (Thrust IIRC).

Which means I somewhat doubt it's available at the same price as the cheapest possible Supermarket unleaded..
 
I thought is was a while (read: a few days) since Jez has reminded us that he has a good Amex offer (which is closed to new entrants). Good job he's reminded us today. :)

To be fair it's no more tedious than the plethora of other wonderfully thrilling 'I just filled my car up' posts and marginally less tedious than the 'I just filled my car up' posts from people living overseas :p
 

Figured as much.

The reason for 2p here and 2p there is that oil has slid gradually since September - it didn't halve in price overnight. At the same time as the oil price fell, the value of sterling against the dollar, the currency in which crude is priced, also fell which mitigated some of the benefits of the lower crude costs.

It hit almost $1.7 to £1 in August and is now barely over $1.5 to £1.

As a result, the oil price fall in sterling terms was lower than that on dollar terms.

Additionally, do not forget that 58p of every litre of fuel is excise duty and on top of the final price 20% VAT is added. Even if crude oil was free of charge, fuel would still cost about 74p a litre after duty, VAT and retailing/refining costs.

So that is why we've had 2p here and 2p there and thats why it shouldn't be 90p a litre.
 
No. Just a realist. I am aware of the cost to the country of low priced fuel. There is a cost to extract oil. And if that is too low, then there is no profit for the oil companies. No profit means no taxes. Means no wage increases, and possible redundancies. Means less money in the economy, means other, non oil jobs are at risk. Meaning the very real possibility of a bigger welfare bill to go along with the reduced tax intake.

Of course everyone likes saving £20 per tank when they fill up. But at what overall cost?

We don't extract enough oil for lower prices to be a bigger drain on the economy than lower energy costs a boost on the economy.

Money not spent on energy costs is spent elsewhere - lower energy costs stimulate our economy, they do not hamper it.

Thats not to say there is no cost or negative aspect to sustained low price, but the benefits in the medium term outweigh the pro's significantly.

Remember, historically prices have almost always been lower than they are now. The boom years of the North Sea were against a backdrop of oil significantly cheaper even than now. North Sea oil is an industry in decline anyway.

$50 a barrel isn't even THAT low!
 
You obviously have put little thought into how the economy actually works.

He hasn't but to be fair neither have you.

If we lived in a nation whose major export was crude oil you'd have a point.

We don't.

There are obviously negative effects of low oil prices but there are also negative effects of high ones, too.
 
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