Couldn't help notice that Brent Crude has dropped around 23% in the last 3 weeks, from $139 to $107 a barrel. Can someone who understands this (I definitely don't), please explain to me (and many others no doubt) how the fk forecourts are still charging £1.80+ a litre? And that's AFTER the fuel duty cut. At the same time as energy bills going through the roof, this just feels absolutely indefensible to me. Genuinely feels like legalised extortion.
I guess because they’ve realised they can. There used to be petrol price wars in supermarket forecourts to draw customers into the supermarket for their big shop. Apparently, some supermarkets used to make a loss on petrol but make the money back on food. If they all have an agreement with each other not to do that anymore they can all just make extra money on petrol. As more people switch to online shopping it probably doesn’t help that much to sell petrol cheaply anymore. As supermarket prices rise, other stations that always price a bit higher than them can increase their prices too. Everyone wins except the customers.
I saw an interview yesterday from a bloke who represents half of the independant garages in the Uk. He said the prices won’t really go down until the the garages had emptied their tanks, which can hold unto hundred thousand litres. he explained that the garages had bought this petrol at high prices so had to pass it on.
The government earns around £28 billion a year from fuel duty (yes you read that right) or £1000 per household and 1.2 per cent of national income. The duty equates to around 57p per litre, VAT also adds 20-25p per litre. This is a regressive tax which burdens the less well off to pay the same as the better off and therefore a greater share of their income, and in many cases its not a luxury if you need to get to work, etc. I was speaking to someone in the U.S yesterday and we worked out its about 80p per litre there at the minute and they're all complaining about how expensive it is for them, their excise duty on it is around 18 cents per gallon - so thats 4.8 cents in tax per litre - so they pay a grand total of 2p tax per litre. So, if you were to add back on our taxes to the current price in the US it would be around £1.60per litre - pretty similar really.
Yeh' they always used to say that when fuel duty was lowered ' "we had to buy our current stock at the higher rate so it can't be lowered until its gone" funny though isn't it that when duty goes up the stock bought at the lower rate increases by 5pm the same day..Shameless profiteering.
Price of heating oil has dropped, went up to £1.20/l at its peak around 3 weeks ago, now down to 78p/l, it was 40p tho back end of last year.
It confuses me is the duty on the fuel paid by the garage when its put in the storage tanks or when its dispensed to the customer if it's the latter what difference it make how they have in there tanks the saving should be instant.
On paper that logic stacks up. In practice though it goes out the window, when you see immediate daily price rises and in some cases even intra-day. That’s the bit that’s indefensible. The logic used to defend delays in decreases, never appears to apply when delaying increases. It’s a cartel. You only have to see BP/Shell profits to see that.
I was shocked this week to learn that quite a few big players in a few industries have informally agreed what I'd say is price fixing. An informal agreement to all charge no less than X amount for a product. This has been in 3 related but different industries that I know of and the people who told me (those who make the decision) said it was a 'bit naughty'
Market manipulation/price fixing is illegal which is more than ‘a little bit naughty’. This is both a civil and criminal offence which can result of fines to the business of up to 10% of worldwide turnover and prison for those involved.
Yep and yet they were a little more open in telling me they've agreed it than I would have thought. Especially when I've got a big mouth
And we now have Joe Biden releasing US oil reserves, something he could have done weeks ago but had the UK going cap in hand to the Saudis.
