Murco fuel

Rainmaker

Rainmaker

Rainmaker

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I don't want to start (yet another?) fuel war in here, but I do have a question. I can't find anything using Google so Motors it is. :)

I live sandwiched between a Shell, a Total and a Murco fuel station. I've always driven diesels and on my last car (HDi) I found that Murco offered the best 'experience'. The car always seemed to deliver better MPG and had a more willing throttle (more 'pull' if you will). Switching back to Shell didn't affect economy too badly but power delivery was definitely down. I've avoided Total out of principle for years, so I can't really comment on those.

However, Murco isn't really a big brand per se and you don't see many of them. My question is, how good exactly is it? I don't mean "Which is the best fuel to use?", but rather "Where does Murco sit in the scale of supply?".

Are they a 'premium'/branded fuel comparable to Shell, BP etc or are they more your budget supermarket bare minimum type? Their derv certainly seems denser and richer than the smoky Tesco pap, in fact it smells rather suspiciously like BP Ultimate. In other words, it 'feels' like a premium fuel and the car does well on it - but is it something I should be using long term or am I better off sticking to Shell so my injectors don't foul up and die inside two years? :p

I know this is somewhat of an abstract question, but hopefully you can get what I'm trying to ask. TIA.
 
I wouldnt exactly say BP and shell were a premium brand, just bigger corporations with bigger marketing budgets so the names are well known.

The supermarkets have been known to cut corners with the refining process, having the tanks their fuel is kept in cleaned with recycled cleaning fluid, skimping on what additives they add to the petrol that can help keep your engine clean etc...

Murco have just over 200 stations so are relatively small compared with bp/shell, but their petrol isnt going to be much different to be honest.

Except that maybe they havent put the time and effort into producing high octane SUL favoured by high powerd cars.

if your just after some diesel thats not going to knacker your car, theres nothing wrong with them.

For what its worth, they refine their own stuff i believe. They've got 4 refinery terminals. No idea what additives they use, i suspect they wont be wanting to tell either ;)
 
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All fuel for Murco comes from Milford Haven, which is (or was) a BP owned refinery built using BP standards. So if thats anything to go by Murco fuel isnt too bad.
 
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Thanks guys, that's pretty much what I was asking for. I know that BP, Shell et al aren't magically somehow wonderful; but as you said MrLOL the supermarket stuff can be quite 'bare minimum'. Less or no additives to the base fuel for example (which I know is shared between brands depending on the nearest refinery outlet).

Meeting bare bones EN spec, and being well developed and full of detergents, cetane improvers and so on are two entirely different things. I just wanted to know whether Murco was one of the 'supermarket types' or whether they use a decent stock and additive package. :)
 
Just to answer some of my own question; according to their website they do indeed now own 100% of Milford Haven where they refine and distribute their own fuel from scratch. I suppose that alone answers my question in that they're producing their own goods rather than reselling from the communal terminal, and my experience of the fuel itself is good.

Regardless of the debate surrounding 'branded' and 'premium' fuels, I suspect we can safely say Murco at least aren't "supermarket" type fuels. I'll fire them an email to see if they have any bumph they can send my way about their fuel etc. I couldn't help but notice they don't offer a 'premium' fuel - just 'normal' stuff. My experience is that Murco's diesel is better than Shell, and certainly supermarket, stuff anyway - so the facts do seem to support my experiences.

Thanks all. :)
 
MrLOL said:
The supermarkets have been known to cut corners with the refining process, having the tanks their fuel is kept in cleaned with recycled cleaning fluid, skimping on what additives they add to the petrol that can help keep your engine clean etc...
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Where do you get your info from?

Cutting corners with the refining process? Really, got a source for that given they don't refine fuel, they simply buy fuel post refining process?

There might well be addidtive differences but to say they skimp on the refining process is just a silly old wives tale, yet you tell it like its factual?

Why?
 
I said myself that I know supermarkets generally buy from the same shared terminal, and that the additives are the difference. However, in defence of MrLOL and taking Tesco as an example; they do indeed own shares (25%?) of their fuel supplier and it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they keep the budget down by doing the bare minimum possible?...
 
[TW]Fox;17640913 said:
Where do you get your info from?

Cutting corners with the refining process? Really, got a source for that given they don't refine fuel, they simply buy fuel post refining process?

There might well be addidtive differences but to say they skimp on the refining process is just a silly old wives tale, yet you tell it like its factual?

Why?
Click to expand...

Do you not remember this ?

it made national news

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6405051.stm

it was caused by them cleaning the tanks out with recycled cleaning detergent. Normally this would be fine, but somewhere along the line it picked up some sillicon deposits when it was first used (before being used in the supermarket petrol tanks) which stuffed everybodys o2 sensors up.
 
well the tanks were at the refinery and it happened before it got to the petrol stations which is what i was trying to get at.

But if you're going to be pedantic about it, its not strictly the actual refining of the petrol process that caused it no. I'll make sure i choose my words more carefully so as not to offend you in future :rolleyes:
 
MrLOL said:
well the tanks were at the refinery and it happened before it got to the petrol stations which is what i was trying to get at.

But if you're going to be pedantic about it, its not strictly the actual refining of the petrol process that caused it no. I'll make sure i choose my words more carefully so as not to offend you in future :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You have to realise fox takes absoluetely every single word people say absolutely literally. It's one thing when it makes a difference, but in incidents like this where you explained exactly what you were talking about, it's really quite tiresome
 
It's not quite as tiresome as peoples ridiculous notion that supermarket fuel is some sort of horrible third world fuel that is just absolutely terrible and poor quality. It's rubbish an its been explained to be rubbish by people with much more knowlege about fuels than us lot.

One news article from 3 years ago which is pretty inclusive anyway doesn't really change that, quite frankly.

There is so much assumption and misinformation around when it comes to supermarket fuels.
 
MrLOL said:
well the tanks were at the refinery and it happened before it got to the petrol stations which is what i was trying to get at.

But if you're going to be pedantic about it, its not strictly the actual refining of the petrol process that caused it no. I'll make sure i choose my words more carefully so as not to offend you in future :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

The tanks were not at the refinery, they were at a storage depot.

The fuel is all the same, I write software for offloading gantries used all over the country and I see all different suppliers of fuel queuing up to load up.
 
It's not really pedantic, is it?

You said supermarkets cut corners in the refinery process and provided a link showing a problem at a storage depot to support your point.

In reality, of course, it's very unlikely corners are cut at the refinery stage. Calling people pedants and stamping your feet won't detract from the fact that what you said was misleading and almost certainly untrue.

The main difference is the additives in the fuel. You cannot buy poor quality fuel in this country, nor do people cut corners, so implying either is just not really on, to be honest.
 
the reality is, so poor ****ers had to shell out several hundread pounds to replace their lamda sensor when they used contaminated supermarket fuel.
 
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