CrudeAwakening wrote:So the premium is worth $5 on the way up, and 28 cents on the way down?
Wikipedia wrote:Protests began on 5 September 2000 when an increase in the price of crude oil prompted major oil companies to announce an increase in the price of petrol to around £0.81 GBP per litre of unleaded (equivalent, at the time, to around $4.48 per US gallon).
. . .
By August 2005, fuel prices had risen far above those that triggered the 2000 fuel protest without any further disruption, to an average of more than £0.90 GBP per litre (US$1.64 per litre, or $6.21 per US gallon). Keep in mind these figures are not adjusted for inflation.
max_power29 wrote:I am not a socialist, I am just saying that you cannot compare apples to oranges (petrol prices in the U.S. vs. Europe)
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me that as a result of fuel taxes being frozen in the intervening years, the more than doubling in oil price since the 2000 spike has had no effect on the inflation-adjusted price we pay for fuel. In fact, in many parts of the country it has become slightly cheaper. It is a very different matter in the US, but then they do not have a thick slab of tax distorting the fuel price response. Does this make sense, or did I screw up somewhere?
MrBill wrote:I think it is important to distinguish between value-added and flat taxes.
TreebeardsUncle wrote:Believe, there is a price level that would significantly reduce demand, perhaps on the order of $10/gallon in US prices.
max_power29 wrote:I am just saying that you cannot compare apples to oranges (petrol prices in the U.S. vs. Europe)
Twilight wrote: And ironically, physical shortages (which is what really does damage) could arrive before the price becomes unaffordable. I think it's conceivable, physical shortage long before we see any demand destruction from price.
Gazzatrone wrote:Here's something anyone can help me understand. Looking at petrolprices.com and just driving past forecourts as well, seeing prices of around 95p is depressing enough. Those prices I could understand last Summer when the price of crude went up to $80. But we are nowhere near that at current prices. Why is this the case? I always thought that the price at the pump went hand in hand with those on the Nymex. I know that there is a time lag between extraction and refining etc from when the barrel of oil is bought to the production cost which is handed on to the customer, but $62pb = 95pence as of now to last Summer when the situation was $80pb = 97pence.
Actually writing this and explaining this to my girlfriend may have given me the answer.
Are we now seeing the relative cost of refining heavier crudes entering the arena?
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
idomar wrote:I seem to remember that in the Main Budget, or the December Budget, why we have two budgets now is confusing but that is another issue, that the rusty iron chancellor increased the rate of fuel duty by 1.25p or something, and that he wanted to re-introduce the fuel tax escalator.
This might have something to do with it too.
Gazzatrone wrote:idomar wrote:I seem to remember that in the Main Budget, or the December Budget, why we have two budgets now is confusing but that is another issue, that the rusty iron chancellor increased the rate of fuel duty by 1.25p or something, and that he wanted to re-introduce the fuel tax escalator.
This might have something to do with it too.
god help us all in the UK if he re-introduces that. But with the popularity he has at the moment I can't conceive of him trying to reintroduce a mechanism that will destroy in a single swoop the British Economy. But then again that is going to happen anyway so why wait?
For those of us who have grown up in post-war Britain food prices have gone only one way, and that is down. Sixty years ago an average British family spent more than one-third of its income on food. Today, that figure has dropped to one-tenth. But for the first time in generations agricultural commodity prices are surging with what analysts warn will be unpredictable consequences.
Like any other self-respecting trend this one now has its own name: agflation. Beneath this harmless-sounding piece of jargon - the conflation of agriculture and inflation - lie two main drivers that suggest that cheap food is about to become a thing of the past. Agflation, to those that believe that it is really happening, is an increase in the price of food that occurs as a result of increased demand from human consumption and the diversion of crops into usage as an alternative energy resource.
On the one hand the growing affluence of millions of people in China and India is creating a surge in demand for food - the rising populations are not content with their parents' diet and demand more meat. On the other, is the use of food crops as a source of energy in place of oil, the so-called bio-fuels boom.
EndOfGrowth wrote:I have heard a couple of people mention that there has been a number of food shortages in some of the major supermarkets here in the UK recently. My partner does the shopping so I have not seen this first hand. Has anyone else seen or heard anything?
Wonder if we'll see a repeat of the 2000 protests. What with higher prices they may get more public support now. Just so long as the public can buy petrol of course.Hundreds of truckers were set to meet in Scotland on Tuesday to discuss holding protests against record fuel prices, while Britain's Road Haulage Association (RHA) said any such action had to stay within the law.
The RHA said that, while it sided with truckers whose businesses were being crippled by fuel costs, it saw any use of trucks to obstruct roads "as pointless, potentially counter-productive and potentially illegal".
In 2000, blockades by truckers of fuel storage depots and refineries caused widespread petrol shortages and paralysed parts of the country.
RHA spokeswoman Kate Gibbs said RHA representatives of some 1,300 hauliers in Scotland were meeting to decide what action to take over fuel prices.
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