 | Oilwatch Monthly - April 2008 | The Oil Drum: Europe | ITN: Grangemouth/Forties YouTube--just for a little more flavor... |  |
73 comments on Grangemouth: the origins of dispute (Thread 1)
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And so the picnic begins.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/-The-fuel-panic-begins.400142...
I didn't see it quite as busy in this in the city yesterday, but then again there are less petrol stations outside Edinburgh than in the city itself.
Grangemouth refines approximately 10% of the annual UK road fuel consumption.
There will be panic buying, not only in Scotland and Northern England - but it will likely spread to other parts of the country.
The 67 days reserves will be depleted initially at a greater rate than normal, causing fuel distibution problems.
Expect another rise in price at the pumps. Diesel has already reached £1.20 at one Texaco station in Surrey.
Rapeseed oil is 98p/litre in Sainsburys - I expect more than a few are tempted to used a diesel/rapeseed mix in their tanks.
In Germany, this has actually occurred over the last few years - and it is illegal, since the fuel tax has not been paid.
And pretty hard to hide - the exhaust has a certain 'Duftnote' or scent.
Not illegal in the UK since July 2007. It was costing HMRC too much to collect the duty from small users, so as long as you "produce" less then 2,500 litres a year, then you pay no duty and no VAT. Details here:
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.por...
Interesting - German police will still occasionally check fuel tanks (mainly trucks) to see what is in them.
There was a person selling rapeseed oil near where I lived, but according to a local fuel seller (who does sell biodiesel), he was shut down because the taxes involving burning fuel for road use were not paid.
Apparently, the British perspective is more along the lines of little fish always swim free anyways, so why bother? Especially in regards to how stores that sell vegetable oil do not need to register.
I'd guess a truck could easily use more than the 2,500 litre limit though, so the owner should either have paid the duty themselves or bought it from a supplier that was paying the duty and gave them a receipt to say so.
Personal use is fine though, and as a supermarket is not selling oil as fuel it doesn't affect them.
I heard that HMRC was spending in the region of £100 to process each duty payment, but the cheques they were receiving were often only for £10 or so! Also, they'd found that the number of people registered as biofuel producers had gone up from less than 10 at the start of the decade to a couple of thousand, so I guess what was a Friday afternoon task once a month had suddenly become a full-time job!
Anyway, I'm happy, because my car has a conversion to burn neat veg oil as well as diesel :-) I don't normally burn food-grade oil, but if there's a fuel shortage I have the option.
Interesting point about veg oil sales in the UK.
Last year I was able to buy veg oil (for cooking) for about 38p/litre.
Once it became legal for individuals to walk into a supermarket and buy veg oil for their cars the supermarkets quickly found that people were coming in and buying a whole shelf’s worth of veg oil in one go. They were, in effect, selling fuel at 38p/litre.
As the next cheapest option is normal diesel at 105p/litre, the supermarkets quickly moved to price food grade veg oil on parity with diesel.
So now the supermarkets are charging 95p/litre and upwards for veg oil to ensure that there is no benefit for car owners to empty the shelves. (Remember veg oil has slighly less energy per unit volume than diesel)
A good example of how biofuels will be priced at the exact same price as their closest competitor regardless of how cheap they are to produce, due to their miniscule sales volumes.
The Free Market at work.
Andy