Fuel up/down again

Biohazard said:
I don't think that garage forecourts themselves are heavily profitable?
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There we go then. We are all agreed. Because thats what everyones point was in the first place - that garage forecourts dont make loads of money, and many of them are not even owned by oil majors anyway, even some of the ones branded as such!

Hugs all round.

The fact that pulling black stuff out the ground and flogging it on the NYMEX futures exchange is hugely profitable isn't really relevant. As an aside, the actual cost of raw crude in a litre of fuel is very small in percentage terms.

One thing, though, is very big in percentage terms. I think it's called tax, and tax on a tax.
 
Biohazard said:
It isn't really, you look at their operations over all.

Again, if it suits you to take one part of the business in isolation and go 'look, little profits that's fine.'

You can't then refuse to parcel it all back together and refuse to accept the overall group position, or activities.
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What you are doing is the equivilent of saying that EasyRentaCar makes loads of money because it's owned by Easyjet who DO make loads of money. When a company runs different operating divisions, you appraise them individually not as a collective whole.

Oil is very very profitable, that's all I was trying to get at.
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We are not talking about oil, we are talking about petrol.
 
Simon said:
You can see why supermarkets sell fuel as a loss leader now though yet some companies get accused of ripping off drivers. Whats the point of selling fuel if you make no money on it ?
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I did think that when I posted it, I knew it'd be you who picked up on it ;)

My point with BP is that in an ideal world the market should dictate that pricing higher than Shell will result in no sales. However, the UK fuel market is based on apathy - people don't even seem to notice the price and just fill up anywhere.

Therefore do I think anyone who buys fuel at BP when it's almost always cheaper elsewhere, even for similar levels of quality fuel, is daft? Yes.

Would I do anything differently if I ran BP's Retail operations? No.

:)
 
Biohazard said:
It does, when you look at the oils sector OVERALL.

OTHERWISE WE'D HAVE NO PETROL STATIONS.

No?
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So should we look at the oil sectors profitability overall when we discuss the profitability of selling plastic bags?

Selling plastic bags is a billion pound industry here in the UK!
 
And I get told off for taking things literally?

If you went fishing for a whole day on a trawler and came back with just 2 fish and somebody said 'Did you catch much?' most people would say 'No mate, nothing at all'.

Because in the context of what would perhaps be expected, it is indeed nothing at all.
 
Biohazard said:
Yeah funny that. ;)

What would you do with fuel tax, and the potential black hole it could leave in its wake?
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It's not really leaving a black hole - it's a 'new' revenue stream each time it increases.

It's not as if people are advocating the removal of a revenue stream that has existed for decades.
 
rypt said:
It's the usual left wing vs right wing debate, where the left wing people want everyone else to give more and more money and utterly fail to grasp that their position is wrong and that the right economic position is correct
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No, it isnt that at all.
 
Biohazard said:
I was merely stressing the minor point to him that it wasn't just the station, but the whole business setup we were 'discussing'.
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You were discussing. On your own. Several pages after you threw personal attacks at everyone.

Everyone else has been discussing the forecourts since the very beginning :p
 
Simon said:
Petroleum is oil, so yes there is a lot of non forecourt sales.

'petrol' is gasoline.
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'Retail Petroleum', however, is the forecourt market. ie, people in this thread talking about the 'Retail Petroleum Market' are referring to the petrol station down the road.
 
About 20mpg.

It'd make a crap taxi, mind, they are getting on a bit now and you'd get sick of putting your profits into fixing it.
 
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