OT (also "ish") Rising fuel costs

[jules]

I have started cycling to work

The disco stays on the driveway all day.

The freelander is running with no rear prop whichs a little

I've keep meaning to see the whole sale price of Veg oil and the freelander runns fin on is and the disco should be fine in the summer running a 60-40 mix

[Daan]

I have a 406 hdi as my daily driver, and since I started driving no faster than 70 MPH, I always achieve 50MPG. Compared to the landy at 30 MPG thats a big saving. My next car will be smaller than a 406 for economy reasons though. Me and my wife are now looking to buy a little diesel-like a 206, to use for large trips (my commute included), so she can use the 406 for local trips.

I looked at getting a old spec diesel and run it on vegetabel oil, but its a lot of hassle and since many people are doing it, veg oil has gone up in price enormously. I just dont think you save a lot with it at the moment.

Daan

[reads90]

When we picked up the Camel after shipping it back from the USA, I had to fill it up with juice. Bear in mind before we left I could brim the tank for a little over 60quid. Our first fill up in January cost over 75quid!! This massive jump is over 5 months!

Know what you mean Dan

What i left to come to the Uk i filled up the disco with diesel and it cost £36 but when i filled it up again last week it was nearly £40 And that was in two weeks

[Eightpot]

In Libya in January, I filled my 90 and six jerry cans for less than £12.

Thats 7p a litre.

7p.

Mind you I bet it's closer to 8p a litre now and they're all crying into thier scarves and walking to work.

[A Twig]

S'alrite - fuel prices will drop soon.

Worldwide demand has actually dropped over the last few months, and oil production from non-OPEC has gone up. It's just that people haven't realised yet. OPEC etc are actually storing a lot of the oil thay they are producing because they can't sell it.

The main problem is that all the screaming headlines are giving a false impression of the market. It's simply a boom-bust cycle like any other good.

See Anatole Kaperovsky's (or what ever his name is) article in the Times. It'll be like the credit crunch, and it'll all re-align soon in a suitably dramatic fashion.

[Bull Bar Cowboy]

Young Twig is quite correct ..................... also remember that one of USA's largest oil fields in Alaska has been out of production for some months now, but is due to come back on line very shortly......................

Sometimes I just wonder if the OPEC nations are just getting their own back on us in subtle sort of way

Ian

[freeagent]

I do hope you are right....

[Godlykepower]

I hope the prices do start falling at some point. I filled up today at Tesco which is usually the cheapest thing around here......£1.28 litre!!!

I would be able to go back to Marlboro's rather than roll-ups then!

[Chris Rogers]

Been watching oil prices daily, and when I was avoiding revision I stumbled across this article in the telegraph!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...C-mostviewedbox

So potential good news, but I somehow doubt that prices will ever drop back below £1 a litre. To think of how expensive we thought it was then, and now we're seeing another 30p ontop!

Lets keep our fingers crossed! looks like if we got rid of speculative buying then we'd have little problem.

[Night Train]

I'm trying to change jobs to remove the 70mile round trip each day. Even in a car it is starting to smart a bit when I have to fill up. I am using B100 from a local supplier at the moment but even that has gone up to 99.9p a litre.

[jules]

In Libya in January, I filled my 90 and six jerry cans for less than £12.

Thats 7p a litre.

7p.

Mind you I bet it's closer to 8p a litre now and they're all crying into thier scarves and walking to work.

[Steve Hiatt]

I bought a Transit 110 a couple of weeks ago to replace the V8 Classic as a daily driver. As I negotiated a full tank of fuel I haven't needed to buy any since.

[nas90]

Both the nas and my Ford Connect (made by Ford as LPG/Petrol vehicle) van at work run LPG

The Connect takes 44 litres of LPG and currently at about 54p/litre thats about £24

With the Connect I can travel somewhere between 230 and 300 miles on a tank full, say 260 miles average thats 9 pence per mile, not bad but was 7 pence per mile 3 years ago when I bought the van.

Standard diesel van / Defender / Disco doing 30 mpg at £1.25 per litre (6.6 miles/litre) is a whopping 19 pence per mile, in your diesel Connect you need to achieve 63 mpg to get the same pence per mile cost as my LPG van.

The nas uses 64 litres of LPG at 54p/litre for about 160 miles on a full tank which is 22 pence per mile not as good as the Connect and a little worse than the Diesel Defender but it's a V8 and an auto and it sounds soooooooooooooooooooooooo nice

LPG is also much better for the environment in terms of particulates and noxious fumes, I really do not understand why we do not run more LPG vehicles in GB, the Connect is also exempt from Red Ken's congestion charge although not the nas due to being converted to LPG after manufacture.

[reads90]

I hope the prices do start falling at some point. I filled up today at Tesco which is usually the cheapest thing around here......£1.28 litre!!!

I would be able to go back to Marlboro's rather than roll-ups then!

Do you really think that they will take the fuel price back down. Yeah right, all that will happen is it will stop going up and stay where they are. They will then pocket the differance. The oil comanys and the goverment

[madmatt]

Do you really think that they will take the fuel price back down. Yeah right, all that will happen is it will stop going up and stay where they are. They will then pocket the differance. The oil comanys and the goverment

I agree its unlikely to ever go down. Oh by the way should I tell you all what Dreadnought110 bought to go to work in as his nice little run around?! Or shall I give you all a clue and see if you can guess??

[python]

do tell??????????

[dreadnought110]

I agree its unlikely to ever go down. Oh by the way should I tell you all what Dreadnought110 bought to go to work in as his nice little run around?! Or shall I give you all a clue and see if you can guess??

Hey don't i have photo evidence of you driving it!!!

[MarkieB]

I just wonder if the OPEC nations are just getting their own back on us in subtle sort of way

[i apologise in advance to those who may be offended, however the price of fuel is seriously offending me:]

Not all that subtle; couldn't we equally 'subtly' turn the fact that we've got nuclear weapons to our advantage?

to save your family from kidnappers, you wouldn't hesitate to send in the SAS; to save your economy from being held to ransom what was the point in developing nukes after all? So Iraq was badly planned; next time, don't send in ground troops, just nukem from the air..

it seems to me that talk of 'the level of demand' presupposes that the chinese [who have nukes as well, let's not ignore them then ] rate of fuel duty is as high as it is here in Europe, else they're getting their [our] fuel cheap by comparison;

basically all the main fuel consumers have nukes, none of the OPEC nations have nukes yet we hope, are we going to wait until at $500 per barrel we're sending $1.5 billion to Iran every day? Eventually $1000 per barrel -> $3 billion per day

[keithjh]

Bought a pug 306 for my daily commiute of 66 miles, instead of using the 300tdi Disco, saving a bl--dy fortine in money but hate driving the thing, seriously thinking about retiring earlier than planned and leaving the UK for cheaper and warmer climate (Sri Lanka) where we planned to go anyway.

Keith

[reads90]

Bought a pug 306 for my daily commiute of 66 miles, instead of using the 300tdi Disco, saving a bl--dy fortine in money but hate driving the thing, seriously thinking about retiring earlier than planned and leaving the UK for cheaper and warmer climate (Sri Lanka) where we planned to go anyway.

Keith

Well at least the price of fuel is coming down again. Dropped a far bit this week . About time

[q-rover]

I have changed nothing.

Still cycle to work with the occaisonal drive. Still go out for drives at the weekends

with the rest of the family.

80L of petrol (or whatever it takes to fill up) will last me about 3-4 weeks.

[MarkieB]

So, a bit more in-depth research indicates:

It's not so much OPEC who are the baddies, as OAPEC [traditionally, though currently it's mainly speculators], an overlapping group [the A stands for Arab], although Iran is in OPEC not OAPEC; OPEC includes countries such as Nigeria [who are currently increasing production to limit price rises], Venezuela, etc; an OPEC meeting in December 2007 aimed to set a price of $70-80 per barrel this year!

the Iraq invasion may have, in fact, caused peak oil production earlier than would normally have happened, although the effect of retaining Iraq's reserves may ease the pain of post-peak price rises; perhaps giving us sufficient time to adapt to alternative energies?

The chinese in fact subsidize their oil, disgusting! Subsidies affordable as a result of a population kept in virtual slavery..

An EIA report stated that OPEC member nations were projected to earn a net amount of $1.251 trillion in 2008 from their oil exports, as a result of the current crude prices

so the question is, how many solid gold rolls-royces [earned from keeping the whole world's population in economic slavery] do you need to withstand a 1-Megaton warhead?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_price_increases_since_2003

then there's the governments; without the duty increasing as well, a doubling of oil prices should lead to a 25% increase in pump prices in Europe..

then there's the oil companies, who seem eager to put prices up at every opportunity

Maybe we should simply nuke everyone who seems to sympathise with oil slavery? Advantages: plenty of oil for the few who are left, etc..

[bill van snorkle]

Maybe we should simply nuke everyone who seems to sympathise with oil slavery? Advantages: plenty of oil for the few who are left, etc..

I totally abhore violence !

Unless it is committed on a grand scale as you advocate

Bill.

[simonr]

I've been running on transesterified waste veg oil (biodiesel), however, the waste oil is getting hard to find as more people cotton on. I don't think that will be a viable long term solution.

I have been talking to one of my friends about building a wood-gas generator - then liquifying it to run an LPG truck. You waste quite a lot of energy in the liquification, but can use some of it to heat your domestic hot water / heating.

We have been looking for an old pick-up 90, preferably 2.5 petrol to convert to running directly from wood-gas (just in case there are any going cheap?).

The raw material to run a generator is readily available in the form of wood-chippings. I've already been offered all I can eat from two sources. Between their current stockpiles there is enough to keep me going for the rest of my life at least!

Running directly from WG isn't that convenient as the generator will take 10 mins to get going - but pressurisation or liquification could solve that to a large degree.

I'm sure this type of thing is going to become more commonplace. Certainly more constructive than Nuking anybody!

Si

[JimAttrill]

Is this Wood-gas like the pictures I have seen of taxis in WWII Paris with huge gasbags on the top? I always wondered how that worked. Do tell. I bet H&S won't allow it, like everything else in the UK today. But here, H&S is unheard of, especially in small enterprises like garage workshops. Employment of the most people is the big issue as there is no dole. And we've got lots of wood around....