The financial crisis - a period of economic readjustment ?

[FridgeFreezer]

That's where I got to - my hobby/project LR and a green oval daily that inevitably found itself off-road because the other one wasn't available.

A "normal" daily removes that prospect and for the most part a more "regular" car (boring or not) has less to go wrong than most LR products.

[Retroanaconda]

I can’t bring myself to drive a normal car - too boring - so my daily is still a green oval but a nice modern one that does everything I need.

This leaves the others to be recreational ‘toys’ for lack of a better word. The key point to this though is I am lucky enough to have a garage and therefore if it sits for a month or so without being driven it doesn’t suffer like it would if it was out in the rain.

[Daan]

I only had my Land rover when I was a student. In reality, I used my bicycle more than my landy because, well, it just never worked when I needed it.

So the first thing I did once I got a job was buying a car that works so I actually know I get to work.

I have gone through a few cars, but now i drive the best car for this purpose:

The polo Bluemotion. It is a 1.2L 3 cylinder TDI, with taller gears in 4th and 5th, 20% lower aero drag and narrower tyres.

I usually get 65mpg over a tank, with the best recorded consumption on a run of 85 MPG. It is tax free due to the CO2 being lower than 100g/km.

I owned it exactly 10 years this month, and clocked up 120000 miles (bought 1 year old at auction with 25000 miles on the clock, it now shows 145000).

In these 10 years I spend £12.600 in fuel, more than I paid for the car (based on an average fuel price of £1.5).

If I had done these 10 years in a land rover, I would have spend £27300 (based on an average fuel price of £1.5)

There were a few problems along the way, but nothing like a land rover would have done.

I do try to have my land rover on the button in the garage, in case the polo stops working, or there is snow.

I quite like driving it, it is all you need to move 1 person from 1 place to the other on a normal road. 

Just like I like driving my land rover, which is perfect for when you are up till your neck in the mud. And here is the thing, I don't need to go till my neck in the mud when I go to work.

I bought it because I expected the fuel price to rise exponentially, which only happened recently.  I fully expect it to hit £2 a litre at some stage.

Over time a small saving becomes a big saving, this gets more important as fuel prices go up.

I am planning an electric car as a replacement in the future, but it needs to wait for a bit.

 

Daan

 

[steve b]

I saw Ineos on the news tonight...not talking about the Grenadier but instead suggesting fracking might reveal vast reserves of shale gas following the lifting of the ban on exploration.

Thoughts? The experience in the USA suggests it's not without risk.

Steve

[Peaklander]

I read that the volumes that we might produce, even though potentially ’huge’, wouldn’t be enough to affect the world price of gas.

[reb78]

4 minutes ago, Peaklander said:

I read that the volumes that we might produce, even though potentially ’huge’, wouldn’t be enough to affect the world price of gas.

I heard this too, but I dont get it. If we are going to frack, produce it and sell it in the UK. Bugger the world price. Set our own. Its not like we cant - other produce isnt e.g. its not like locally grown potato prices are linked to the price of potatoes in Russia? It cant be hard?

Edited September 22, 2022 by reb78

[steve b]

15 minutes ago, reb78 said:

I heard this too, but I dont get it. If we are going to frack, produce it and sell it in the UK. Bugger the world price. Set our own. Its not like we cant - other produce isnt e.g. its not like locally grown potato prices are linked to the price of potatoes in Russia? It cant be hard?

You'd think that would be easy, but unless it's all owned and financed by the state then the free market economy prevails, so a profitable business choice for the explorers. 

Sad, but that's the reality. A counter comment about state subsiding home insulation would seem eminently more sensible financially and environmentally too? 

....I wonder how much domestic gas units are in Russia compared to the ROW ? 

Steve 

[sean f]

16 hours ago, steve b said:

I saw Ineos on the news tonight...not talking about the Grenadier but instead suggesting fracking might reveal vast reserves of shale gas following the lifting of the ban on exploration.

Thoughts? The experience in the USA suggests it's not without risk.

Steve

Most of the problems quoted from the USA are either garbage or from very bad operating practices (regulation can be a bit patchy compared to the UK), real risks if done properly are very low, quotes of gas leaking into water supplies etc are often from places where that was natural before they started drilling (natural gas and oil seeps are more common than most people think), just on pure self interest the companies want to sell the gas, if it leaks away that's there money disappearing!, the geology in the potential producing areas in the UK make this very unlikely. The process WILL create minor earthquakes, the clue is in the name, they fracture the ground, but a HGV hitting a pot hole also creates an earthquake often of a higher magnitude depending on how hard it hits, any mining area will have much bigger shocks from blasting above or below ground.

That said I am sceptical on how well it will work here, technically they can only frack and produce a certain zone around the drilled hole so quite a few holes are required, with fairly standard drilling tech you can drill down and out about 2-3 miles, more is possible but it needs more and bigger kit and is higher risk so costs start heading up exponentially. So from a single drilling site you can tap reserves from about a 5-6mile diameter area, in the USA it is normally relatively easy to move behind a forest or hills and find a low population area where you can drill out of sight or where no one cares to much, in the UK with the population densities we have that's just not possible, you will always be next to someone. A drill site can be anywhere, even the middle of an industrial estate but it will be noisy, and have lots of trucks going in and out which will cause problems in most places and realistically be the biggest impact to people in the area, there will be protestors as well so security costs will be high and disruptions adding to operating costs. In the USA the land owners will get a share of the revenue from the produced gas so basically they can be bought, in the UK oil and gas as well as coal are national resources so the land owner gets nothing except the person who either sold or rented them a plot for the drill rig and production equipment to go on.

All oil and gas production is done by private companies and is sold on international markets or with prices set from international markets and the quantity produced in the UK will not even come close to effecting them so not going to do anything to reduce prices. I do find it quite entertaining that as oil and gas producing companies are making increased profits there are calls to increase the rates they are taxed at (companies are taxed on profit so the government is already getting increased revenue anyway) but there never seems to be any mention of the solar and wind farms (generally smaller companies) which must also have seen hugely increased profits getting there rates of tax increased. "Green" energy tariffs have gone up at the same rate as standard ones so someone is cashing in in a big way there as well.

[cackshifter]

It remains to be seen whether it will reduce gas prices, but it will reduce the amount of imports and so have a positive effect on the balance of payments, and probably the pound.  Even if we never burn any more gas we need gas as a chemical feedstock for all sorts of things. If the war were to end tomorrow, I doubt anyone would buy Russian gas at least for a while, so the price of gas is likely to remain high even if not at current levels. 

[smallfry]

7 hours ago, cackshifter said:

If the war were to end tomorrow, I doubt anyone would buy Russian gas at least for a while, so the price of gas is likely to remain high even if not at current levels. 

I believe many European countries will buy it at the drop of a hat, maybe even here in the UK, given all the political unrest surrounding energy prices, and the fact that most people now seem to be expecting the government to pay their energy bills. I really do not understand what they are thinking, because it all has to paid for, somewhere along the line. But maybe if we just ignore this fact, the problem will go away.

I would hope that if this is done, along with dropping sanctions, is only after a regime change. I am not holding my breath !

[Snagger]

21 hours ago, cackshifter said:

It remains to be seen whether it will reduce gas prices, but it will reduce the amount of imports and so have a positive effect on the balance of payments, and probably the pound.  Even if we never burn any more gas we need gas as a chemical feedstock for all sorts of things. If the war were to end tomorrow, I doubt anyone would buy Russian gas at least for a while, so the price of gas is likely to remain high even if not at current levels. 

Unfortunately, it takes a while for the new North Sea and fracking projects to be productive.  Unless Europe continues to import expensive LNG from the US and Qatar, then buying Russian gas in the interim is likely.  It doesn’t need to be a long term contract, but being dependent on any other nation for essential resources is a bad idea, strategically and economically.  So, best we get our own industry back on its feet while renewables and nuclear are perused for the mid to long term energy supply, allowing domestic gas and oil to be used predominantly for the chemicals and metals industries (and such like) in the future rather than for general energy.

[steve b]

I've just spent a half hour on the phone to Shell trying to find out the actual numbers for my home electric day and night usage to enable me to look at alternative supplier choices (probably pointless anyway....) and the end result is the operator could not find my account detail, awesome.

The annual electric usage emailed pdf only provides a total kwh for the year which makes on line comparison searches  impossible. 

One could be forgiven for thinking it's a deliberate move to make it hard work to look at different suppliers, I was assured an email with the details in pdf form would be sent when my data is found.

officially grumpy 

Steve

[Snagger]

You are on a smart meter then?

[steve b]

Not changed it yet - the old economy7 is still active for a while. 

Steve

[Snagger]

Without a smart meter, I can’t imagine that they can see the pattern of your energy use to give any more information that the total used between bills.

[David Sparkes]

The question I'd like to ask is, in the absence of a Smart Meter, how often were the meters read manually?

Shell will not be able to supply any more granularity than that periodicity.

Were they read, by a human eyeball, monthly, or perhaps quarterly, with estimates for the months when no reading took place?

I changed supplier about 7 years ago, and again about 4 years ago. I  don't recall knowing monthly figures, but I do recall creating a spreadsheet based on quarterly figures. Actually creating the spreadsheet database was a boring activity, but once I had those figures I had numbers to put into the prediction boxes of other possible suppliers. Thus the final comparison became pretty straight forward.

Regards.

[steve b]

The meters are read by me every month and the data is entered on Shell's meter reading page. The electric reading has day and night entry boxes. The entry boxes provide the previous 3 or 4 readings as entry is started and the page software will question the entry if it does not fit normal use (when an entry is mis-entered or say day is entered into night).

The data is there, somewhere, maybe it's time to write it in a notebook every month as well so I have my own record. 

This is the most basic data and should be readily available.

I'm asking for the annual usage of kwh for the two rates of electricity, it's not like I want to know how many neutrino's passed through the damn meter.....

Steve

[Peaklander]

There are several overnight tariffs now, for example at Octopus: Go and Agile. The latter has four and five hour periods ( you choose) where the rate is very low. It’s balanced by higher ‘daytime’ rates. Some suppliers want proof of EV ownership but I’m not sure if that’s anymore than a declaration.

As well as shifting your load by time delay, people are now fitting batteries in order to charge them in those periods, usually supplementing solar charging with daytime excess generation. 

[David Sparkes]

1 hour ago, steve b said:

The meters are read by me every month and the data is entered on Shell's meter reading page. ....

In that case I agree, you have every right to feel aggrieved.
I wonder what external body you could complain to, after all, by setting up a system for you to record your readings they are leading you to a expectation they are going to use them, and take care of them. (If they weren't going to take care of the information there would be a disclaimer to that effect, wouldn't there!)

As they haven't, it might seem they were misleading you, and surely, misleading Customers must have some quango bouncing up and down.

Regards.

[steve b]

I'm going to wait for an email as promised for a few days before doing anything else. I've had a poke about on my account pages and the only electricity info is monthly kwh use as a total, no day and night separation. All very odd as my payment plan is based on the two different rates.

Steve

[landroversforever]

1 hour ago, David Sparkes said:

In that case I agree, you have every right to feel aggrieved.
I wonder what external body you could complain to, after all, by setting up a system for you to record your readings they are leading you to a expectation they are going to use them, and take care of them. (If they weren't going to take care of the information there would be a disclaimer to that effect, wouldn't there!)

As they haven't, it might seem they were misleading you, and surely, misleading Customers must have some quango bouncing up and down.

Regards.

Ofgem is the one for gas and electric.