Diesel a record 17p more expensive than petrol due to demand for generators
They will just go out and speak the truth, even if that’s not what is quite desired, that truth.
It’s worth their doing so as well, of course. Not exactly, but roughly, you can make diesel or not make diesel in a refinery. So, price changes mean you run the refinery to make more diesel and less petrol. Good, that aids in matching supply to demand, that’s good.
That people are using generators rather than shivering in the dark and being happy might not be so good but then that’s just people for you.
If the governments’d just stop their jihad against fossil fuels. And dig more coal, and pump more oil and gas, we wouldn’t have these problems.
All they’d really need to do is abolish the idiot regulations that are strangling production and dump the subsidies to unreliables.
@Boganboy
If only, but it’s also the brainwashing.
We have a lot of coast, and it’s often windy. Kryten with hair (aka sir Kweer) used that chilling phrase “renewable superpower” (hells teeth, he has to ape wee Jimmie!?) as part of his “vision” at the ongoing party congress.
(Should I cash in my pensions now?)
I image it’s the same down under re sunshine. Burning death star sized batteries do generate a good deal of heat I suppose, but it’s short lived and hardly conducive to toasting marshmallows given the accompanying clouds.
Oh, you don’t need to wooory about the smoke, Mark..
Them big batteries burn so hot you can toast your marshmellows form a respectable distance, well away from any smoke produced.. 😉
It isn’t people who have diesel generators, it’s companies. For backing up a house, you’d want a 3-5kW unit which will invariably be petrol. If you are a supermarket or a datacentre and already have backup generators for when the power goes out, once the price of electricity exceeds the price of diesel — and you’re far more likely to be on spot prices if you’re a major consumer like that — then it’s just a matter of pressing a button. Given it’s a lot easier to move oil around than gas, and marginal electricity will come from gas, it’s probably a reasonable switch to make in the short term. Of course, generators don’t have anywhere near the exhaust standards that road vehicles do, so there will be some significant localised increase in NOx, particulates and possibly SO2 where these generators are running.
Somewhere around 2008 diesel got a lot more expensive than petrol because there was a ca. 18-month lead time in shifting refineries to produce more diesel after the big push by governments across Europe for diesel cars. It wasn’t 18p/litre, but it was probably not far off in % terms. IDK much about refineries beyond the chemistry, so it could be simple for them to increase diesel production because they’ve already got the kit from ~2008-15 and “just” need to plumb it back in, or there could be another long lead time. Pretty certain they can’t react beyond a certain amount in any approximation to real time.
Is OPEC’s markup far more significant than 18p?
Since the story’s about the price differential between diesel & petrol & OPEC sell crude, it hardly makes any f*****g difference, does it?
I still smirk when I remember colleagues c. 1973 saying they would give up their cars if petrol reached 50p a gallon. Those that haven’t died yet of old age are still driving. Comparing salaries then and now for the same job, today’s price is exactly the same percentage as it was then – which amazes me.
I don’t know why the oil companies or filling stations come in for so much stick when it’s the government that takes the biggest cut for the least effort.
And yet we are about to introduce more Temporary Government Programs throughout the western world to subsidise the use of stuff which is actually in short supply.
Who thinks that the result will be a better match of demand to supply in the future?
If you graph the retail price of petrol since 1900 in real prices, it’s almost flat outside war time.
I’ve got a graph somewhere which I keep losing. I’ll have to bookmark it when I find it again.
Price of petrol here shot up (again) by about 25% because most of the refineries that supply the area are all doing scheduled maintenance shutdowns at the same time. This isn’t uncommon though usually the price jump isn’t as high, the argument for all doing it at the same time is that summer is high usage and this is a lower demand time and the higher price jump this year is because demand hasn’t fallen as much apparently
Funnily enough a government report into why we have relatively high fuel prices that came out just before Covid and seems to have been buried since found that among other issues (like claiming shortages when they were actually exporting a surplus) the refineries were (as you’d expect) stock-piling before maintenance so claims of short falls to justify price increases were exaggerated.
I remember someone laughing scornfully when I said I’d costed my car on the assumption of petrol at £1 per gallon. “Not in my lifetime” he said. Some people are just permatits.
jgh
this one? “PETROL PRICES 1896 TO PRESENT”
http://www.citroenhyonline.co.uk/resources/AA%20Petrol_Prices_1896_2012_gallons.pdf
@BiFR
And yet we are about to introduce more Temporary Government Programs throughout the western world to subsidise the use of stuff which is actually in short supply
There is no shortage of supply. There’s shortage of extraction, delivery and refineries due to Gov’ts’ policies
Pcar, you pendant.