Why did the fuel protests run out of steam?

I think that people are capabale of seeing that the price of fuel is not to do with taxation; it is to do with demand. China and India are now huge importers of fuel. This has driven up the price because there is not enough capacity in the system of production. Britain is at the mercy of an unregulated oil market where the interests of super states like China and America, and the interests of the financial institutions are paramount.

The cost of fuel will continue to rise. Commentators predict a threefold increase in the cost of a barrel of oil before there is a crisis. The answer for the Uk is to develop alternatives that are more reliable (we are dependent on unpredictable states like Russia and Saudi for our fuel 'security') and cheaper. This would be possible with the necessary degree of imagination and political will. But it won't be forthcoming. So get used to paying more and more for your fuel. A smaller car might be a start; or a bike. Or stick to paying a firtune every time you fill up, but don't whine about it, it's no-one's fault really. It's the system which is at fault because resources are finite and demand is growing. How about diminishing that demand rather than adding to it?

With pressure from many quarters to reduce CO2 emissions, the government and car manufacturers are responding to by making smaller, economical cars attractive to the mass markets. And public transport is being pushed forwards as a viable option for many journeys.
This will eventually cause a great reduction in the consumption of petrol and diesel. The knock-on effect would be a drop in oil companies profits and government revenue; UNLESS it is replaced by higher prices.

If prices go up, then tax revenue rises automatically, without the government further making itself unpopular. So the government will not press the oil companies to rein in their price rises. Therefore, unless public opinion/action can be successfully mobilised, fuel prices will continue to rise.

No protesters what a surprise, this has been re-visited time and time again and why blockade the refineries when the product is piped up and down the country?? And I remeber being in the 2000 protests, I was a tanker driver that was followed home, spat on, threatened, and being ran of the road by other LORRY drivers??? Proffesional people driving and trying to run a tanker of the road carrying 41100 ltrs of motor spirit.
Another reason that the protesters never came out was the fact that as many other people have mentioned was Christmas shoppers, cold and where were the locations of the refineries.

organised chaos i think. Sort this out with the Government not the oil companies and the people that work there.

Quite simply, as already commented on, LACK OF PUBLICITY.
This is the first I'd heard of the protest. On that there is no other comment needed.

TWO FACTS!!

1. The government are going to tax us by WHATEVER means that they can.
AT LEAST WITH FUEL TAX, WE HAVE 'SOME' CONTROL OVER HOW MUCH WE PAY. The motorist who drives an efficient and serviced vehicle, responsibly will ALWAYS pay less tax than the person who drives a thirsty vehicle, with a heavy foot and CAN'T BE ARSED with servicing it.
With taxing FUEL USAGE we have more CONTROL than compared with toll roads (Where you get taxed the same amount for the same type of vehicle regardless, just for using a road!) and road tax (Where your taxed for owning a type of vehicle WHETHER YOU USE IT OR NOT!!!). And remember that the toll road system that monitors your journey ALSO monitors your average SPEED!

2. Just because you and everybody that you've ever known has always done it, DOESN'T MAKE IT RIGHT!
We, in the 'developed' world, have been living beyond our means for a long time now and the rest of the world is trying hard to copy us.
It's about time that we took responsibilty for our actions!

Posted by Zakalwe, 4th January 2008 7:34pm and before that and after that.
I am going to kill myself the world is at an end . LOL

get a life you scare no one you are such a lonely person that can spell and add commers and full stops and belive that the air you breath is not being taxed by this incompatant govenment

if I am not as cleaver as you with spelling and full stops tough but you may stop some peaople with gramma problems from entering blogs with your stupid coments and critisisum spelt wrong so what you still understood.

as for the fuel price the tax on fuel is the problem and with that and the rest of the govements lack of brtitish bussines support and imports of imergrants has cripled our heath service tax on fuel and everything. why we don't produce anything to sell, inventions are not backed they have been and will be given to other countrys to develope so we can keep selling thier products .

when this rubbish govenment has the bottle to go to the elections they will see a vote against them that will show that they will never get elected ever again and as for the cons if they think they are in for a run in office they can think again the two parties are to similar it now time for a complete change for a govenment that belives in Britan as beeing the best
Bernie, love your comments keep them up

Now if we took that style of protest to Tesco's....

that would make a difference and no stressed out forecourt managers would suffer just the Billions in Profit that Tesco take out of our pockets every year.

Here's the deal today

Petrol 39.75 (Fuel Duty 50.35p VAT 15.8p)

Petrol 39.75p TAX 66.15p

but that's not the end of it

For me I have to earn £1.58 to end up with a £1 after taxes are removed

So my 66.15p Tax is really £1.04 and 1/2p per litre TAX

and then the Government takes tax from the 39.75p on profits of Oil Companies and the PAYE and NI from everyone working in delivering that Litre

It is entirely the Governments fault that Petrol is 105.9/lite today

Each time I fill up my Ford Focus I give Gordon Brown another £32 (after NI and PAYE) - I hope he spends it wisely.

Tesco is the way to go on a protest

They would soon whine to Mr Brown

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it

We are hitting £ 106.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1 .10 a ltr. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't
continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT,whoever
thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.

Please read it and join in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take a ggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place
not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not
purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.


If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's
really simple to do!!

Now, don't wimp out at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send i t to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the
message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and
pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it... ..

THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt,
all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! Acting together we can make a difference . If this makes
sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso

Apathy that is why this protes failed while this laissez faire Government supplies its Bread and circuses to the masses in the form of dull stupefying TV or Mobile Phones and cheap booze with cheap poor quality but filling food .The masses will not do any thing to change the status quo.
Most people today have no idea who their Mp is they probably did not vote at the last elections.
They sit in front of their goggle box read the Sun and think they are in clover.
They believe the lies about global warming believing higher taxes will stop the poles melting not realising it is a natural occurance and has happened before. The green Lobby is welcomed as an opportunity to tax the masses more who will say thank you I have saved another cuddly polar bear.
Pathetic proletariat.

Yawn

EXTRACT FROM WIKIPEDIA:

PEAK OIL is the point in time at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.

M. King Hubbert (a famous Petroleum geologist) first used the theory in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. His model, now called Hubbert peak theory, has since been used to predict the peak petroleum production of many other countries, and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures.

Some observers, such as petroleum industry experts Kenneth S. Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons, believe the high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agricultural and industrial systems on the relative low cost and high availability of oil will cause the post-peak production decline and possible severe increases in the price of oil to have negative implications for the global economy. Although predictions as to what exactly these negative effects will be vary greatly, "a growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day."

If political and economic change only occur in reaction to high prices and shortages rather than in reaction to the threat of a peak, then the degree of economic damage to importing countries will largely depend on how rapidly oil imports decline post-peak. The Export Land Model shows that the amount of oil available internationally drops much more quickly than production in exporting countries because the exporting countries maintain an internal growth in demand. Shortfalls in production (and therefore supply) would cause extreme price inflation, unless demand is mitigated with planned conservation measures and use of alternatives, which would need to be implemented 20 years before the peak.

Liberal estimations of peak production forecast a peak will happen in the 2020s or 2030s and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used.

Conservative predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that the peak has already occurred or will occur shortly and, as proactive mitigation may no longer be an option, predict a global depression, perhaps even initiating a chain reaction of the various feedback mechanisms in the global market which might stimulate a collapse of global industrial civilisation.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, GOOGLE 'PEAK OIL'.

PEAK OIL HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.

GET USED TO IT.

OIL, PETROL, DIESEL, GAS AND ELECTRICITY PRICES WILL CONTINUE TO RISE.

GET USED TO IT.

THERE ARE NO TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH'S ON THE WAY THAT CAN POSSIBLY REPLACE OUR DEPENDENCE ON OIL.

98% OF THE WORLD'S TRANSPORT INCLUDING CARS, PLANES, SHIPS AND TRAINS RELY ON A STEADY SUPPLY OF OIL.

FORGET HYDROGEN AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES - THEY WON'T BE DEVELOPED IN TIME TO OVERCOME OUR LOOMING WORLD WIDE FUEL SHORTAGES.

CHINA AND INDIA ARE DEMANDING EVER GREATER SUPPLIES OF OIL AT A TIME WHEN WORLD WIDE PRODUCTION IS HEAVILY IN DECLINE.

EXPECT CONTINUING RESOURCE WARS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES.

GET USED TO IT.

BYE BYE FOR NOW SHEEPLE. BYE BYE.

END YOUR IGNORANCE ABOUT OIL PRICES NOW.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON 'PEAK OIL' SEE THE FOLLOWING WEB PAGE:

en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Peak_Oil:_High_Tide_for_an_Oil_Addicted_World

WATCH THE FOLLOWING FILM ABOUT 'PEAK OIL' AND BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND WHY OIL PRICES WILL CONTINUE TO ESCALATE IN PRICE:

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-703701197044020456&q=a+crude+awakening&total=177&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

E-mail received today seems a good plan if everyone joins in

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it

We are hitting £106.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.10 a ltr. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT,whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.

Please read it and join in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.


If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!!

Now, don't wimp out at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it... ..

THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! Acting together we can make a difference . If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES


It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso

This blog entry has been running for nearly a month, and 84 replies speaks volumes really!.

With other comments running well into 3 or 4 figures this should send a message that nobody gives a damn about supporting a protest.

If you really want to see a strong protest..........take Coronation Street and Eastenders off the TV, you'd probably have millions up in arms over it, yet get fleeced with high taxes, and everybody turns a blind eye.

The government can do whatever they like because the British people will not stick together and protest .
Gone are the days when people were proud to be British and stand by one another.
It is the fault of the people that the government get away with doing whatever they wish.
After all who is going to stop them?

i work for a sub company that runs service stations across the uk we have to keep 10000 ltrs for emergency services just in case.

I read in our local newspaper (Sandwell express and Star) that the goverment are going to introduce measures in the next few weeks that mean if there is another protest moterists will only be able to fill £15 pounds worth of fuel at nay one time.. They are also going to put what were described as blue petrol stations out for emergency services only..

I don't think protesting out side goverment offices will do any good, I have joined 3 mass protests in London over the last few years with up to 250000 people , the goverment didn't take a bit of notice,

I think it is disgraceful the price of fuel that we the public are expecting to pay and by the look of it no- one cares! We are the Worst country to stay in cos our government are greedy! first it was the smoking ban forced on us and now it is the price of fuel!
So they want to cut down on the volume of traffic on the roads, but when you stay in a rural area with rubbish public transport - how do you get to work? How do you live with no money cos you have to put most of your wages into the car to get to work! You cannae win!
Cut the cost of public transport and make it frequent and reliable - I will willing use it! (cheaper anyway!) The world is falling apart and there is nothing anyone can do about it!!!

While all this infantile squabbling about pollution tax goes on, there have been many reports of late, signposting that we as a civilisation are heading for ecological catastrophe. These include the 2006 United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Report, the Stern Report and latterly, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). All of these paint a disquieting, plausible portrait of an Earth inching toward the brink of abrupt catastrophic planetary collapse, and challenges us to transform our current parasitic relationship with the Earth that sustains us.

We must realise now that attaining a "reasonable lifestyle" cannot be accomplished with sledgehammer tactics of the past. In our blind struggle for the survival of the fittest, richest and most acquisitive, we seem to have forgotten many of the fundamentals necessary to support all life. It has long been assumed by neo-classical economic models that the sum of individual demands somehow equalled a broader social good, and commercial interests, designer politicians and errant economists continue to tout this view with renewed vigour.

All scientific evidence so far, supports that fact that our current "reasonable lifestyle" based on this neo-classical "consumption assumption", could turn our big blue marble into just another cold dead rock - as described by physicist John E. Brandenburg and science writer Monica Rix Paxson in the book Dead Mars, Dying Earth.

On a more practical and immediate note, now that oil has broken the 100 Dollar a barrel mark, some oil strategists predict that the whole industrial culture will at some point start breaking down and that a world without oil, is not a world that can support 6 billion human beings. It is not a world that can support 3 billion. It may not even be a world that can support one billion, as transportation, power and other oil-dependent products and services will become much more expensive.

They envision a catastrophic end to the era of fossil-fuel exploitation, a radical collapse of the entire world industrial system within the 21st century, a collapse that, they say, actually began about the year 2000, will quicken in pace till about 2012, and then drop off a cliff in the run-up to about 2030, when the lights will have begun to go out permanently, and there will be, so to speak, a need to train "candle makers", if wax can be found.

The maths is done. No amount of alternatives will replace the demands of the many rapacious, energy hungry economies that exist at present. Not coal, not gas, not nuclear, not solar, not fuel cells, not wind, not anything. The prospects for all of these options are well reviewed and found wanting. We are building our way in to the "Big Empty" and the undoing of this "Earth Rape", inadvertently called "progress" will inevitably happen.

Then we will no longer consume more than nature can provide and waste more than nature can clear away. So stop this ineffective exchange of hot air. Less cars less road deaths. Less cars more life. Less cars more world

I've just filled up at lunchtime and the dirty beggars have put yet another 2p / litre on since last week.

In total the price of fuel from the same station that I always use (Asda) has risen an additional 12p / litre since September last year.

Therefore the sums are as follows.

Weekly fill ups = approx 150l
Additional cost 150 x 12p =£18 / week
times that by 48 working weeks £864

864 additional pounds / year to get to and from work than it did 6 months ago, and I'm sure this price will rise.

I'm beginging to think why I bother as the increase in living I receive this year in the form of a pay rise won't cover this cost, no wonder there's so many scroungers living off state hand outs.

I've been using commercially produced Biodiesel for the past 18 months.

For those who don't understand the concept this is neither raw vegetable oil nor made from virgin oils which are used at the expense of food production. Instead this is properly produced fuel which is made from the waste oil created IN food production, the type which would normally have to be disposed of through conventional means when you've enjoyed that pub lunch, or had a fry up from a fast food eaterie.

Yes, there is not enough of this alternative fuel to go around and power every diesel engine, however having watched a BBC2 program last night, it was announced that 200 tonnes of used oil is illegally dumped down London's Sewers every year - 200 tonnes which could quite easily power motorists vehicles or even public transport for quite a while. Then also consider that the waste oil dumped in other city centres too. Its also 200 tonnes further per year farther away from the aforementioned 'peak oil'.

If the Government was really interested in green motoring, this oil would have been collected, and every drop would have been burned instead of fossil fuel - in public transport or council vehicles, at least, and it wouldn't be clogging up the sewers.

Biodiesel, made from used cooking oil, which would normally be thrown away, does exist but unlike in other parts of Europe it is not easily available. Part of this is down to the fact, that just like Fossil fuel it's commercial production is taxed heavily by our Government with just over 30p a litre and VAT added to every litre produced.

Whilst Biodiesel can be produced privately, and duty free on upto 2500 litres per year, this is beyond the scope of most motorists and so buying commercially would be the only viable option. Unfortunately this often means that the commercially produced Biofuel is often the same price, or even more expensive than fossil fuel hence there is no incentive to switch over, and very little incentive for small and medium sized biodiesel producers to start up in business.

If the duty was lowered further on Biodiesel, then the cost of it would be around 60p - 70p per litre, however despite being a greener fuel (Run a car on biodiesel and have an MoT emissions test if you doubt it!) the Government still wants its duty, and so, alternative fuels such as this never really gain ground

The manufacturers should also take some blame. Very few cars are approved to run on 100% Biodiesel (although many biodiesel users have being running them, trouble free, for many years at their risk). VW used to approve their earlier TDI's (1996 - 2002) models for RME (Biodiesel) use, however even they have not kept pace and now their newer models are not 100% compatible.

Maybe instead of investing money in battery powered vehicles, it should perhaps concentrate on making their current range 100% biodiesel compatible - its not re-inventing the wheel as it as already been done before - by the aforementioned VW!. Perhaps then, (along with a duty decrease) there will be an incentive for everyday motorists to use the greener fuels which have already existed for well over a decade, and to use up the waste oils which go to landfill or down the sewer.

Okay, so there is not enough used oil to power every diesel engine on the road, but lets use the waste oil that is available at least!

With the kind of support the public gave at demonstrations all we can do is sit back and pray.

well smthing shoud be done about this petrol prices as that nealy raching 110 a liter and nearly costing 20% more 4 evry thing

Why did it run out of steam?

It's obvious really, everyone realises it's not the oil companies who're causing the price hike, it's our government.

All we can really do is sit back and allow Gordon and the Muppett show to rake in the coffers so that at least when we vote him out at the next election, the following government has a financial headstart to start repairing the damage caused by this lampoon of a government.

I HAVE HAD IT WITH THE COST OF FUEL. WHEN I VISITED GURNESEY IT WAS 39P A LITRE.

THE COST OF FUEL IS NOT ACCEPTABLE AND YES THE GOVERNMENT MAY PUT OTHER TAX UP LIKE ON FOOD OR CIGS BUT AT LEAST WE WOULD BE ABLE TO AFFORD TO GET TO WORK AND GET THE MONEY. AT THE MO I FIND IT HARD TO KEEP UP WITH FUEL RISES AS I COMMUTE 110 MILES (ALTOGETHER) A DAY

Don't fill up at the most expensive garage, thanks to petrol prices information try and find the cheapest station in your area, at least you'll get slightly more litres per tank. Ive just payed 105.9pence per litre for diesel thats the cheapest in my area. Protesters should not have given up, hope they try again somewhere local. Would gather a team of mates and try get the message across to this greedy rip-off government to lower fuel duty. Thank you petrolprices.com keep up the good work.

I agree with you about inefficient welfare. Having been through jobseeker's myself while waiting to get the position I'm in now, I can attest to your claim that the system is full of British born slackers who would rather breed like rabbits and complain about the Polish than lift a finger. However, this will not rectify our energy situation. Even if all welfare was suspended indefinitely (good luck with that), it wouldn't alter things in the long term. The US today is finding it difficult to restock it's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) because of $100/barrel oil. Imagine the difficulty we will have, even with a stronger currency.

I also question you fully comprehend the population problem. The only reason we have such high prices now is down to the likes of China and India playing catch-up to the West with over two billion people wanting to live like us, and a vast chunk of them at child bearing age.

That state of affairs cannot continue, and we are seeing the effects today.

Bernie: Concession accepted. Don't let the door hit your posterior on the way out.

Now that it's just sensible adults left, let's continue.

Joe Blow: You are correct in that we will have oil in 50 years. In fact, we will likely have a lot of oil 1,000 years from now still in the ground. The problem is not running out of oil. It is that we have _run out_ of light, sweet crude that is easy to find and extract. Even if oil prices reached $1,000/barrel without the economy imploding (doubtful), if the energy return on the sour crud you may as well use as asphalt is less than what you put in, then it's a zero sum game. You can't sustain anything if it takes two barrels worth of oil energy to extract one barrel of oil from the ground. Oil prices have already quadruple in less than a decade as we sit on this "undulating plateaux". Imagine what will happen when oil output _declines_ finally at a percentage every year.

I'm sorry to say there are no alternatives to this either. Oil is the most energy dense hydrocarbon there is. Quite simply, it is the most precious resource this planet has, and ever will, have. The likes of bio-fuels will not make a dent in demand, for a simple reason. Think of oil from the ground as an inheritance left by a rich uncle which you use to supplement your meagre salary at a local McDonald's. You have plenty of money from the inheritance to squander on what you want, but when it's run out, you have only your salary to take up the slack in the future. The oil from millions of years ago is the inheritance and we've used all the good stuff up. Paradoxically, the less useful stuff is harder to get and more expensive, and this is playing havoc with the refineries globally right now. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there are no more elephant size oil fields left to sate our appetites.

It seems my last comment wasn't added. I shall type it up again later as close as I remember it.

Guys calm down. Yes everyone knows there is not as much oil left as ten years ago but there is still enough to keep us going for the next 50 years (at least). Us as the “supreme” human race on earth came up with this brilliant way of converting oil into useful energy surly within the next 50 years we will come up with a suitable replacement.

Let us not over do things. There is nothing wrong with being careful but lets not under estimate what we can do, what we can achieve.

By making fuel dearer through tax is not working we still need our cars. It has been proved in the past and it is being proven now. I think if the government stopped paying for people who do not feel like working because there is welfare or the teen-agers who decide to fall pregnant and get luxuries such as houses as a reward there would be enough money to “afford” to put the fuel duty down.

I do not think (my opinion) that population is that much of a problem. Great nations need people power to keep things running. If it was that bad of a problem there would be restrictions on family sizes. Immigration would not be such a problem if we just took the opportunities such as EDUCATION and used it. There would be no need for foreign scientists and engineers if the locals would study it. Everyone is too busy trying to be the next pop star or page three girl and immigrants are capitalising on it.

I have another suggestion as a cure for the rise in fuel prices. Force all filling stations to sell at the same price. That would cut out people driving that extra mile to get 2 pence cheaper than their local station. Make diesel cheaper than petrol. Modern diesels use less in terms of quantity than other forms of fuels even LPG. Lastly the government should try to keep the price steady. For example fuel going up once a year only. I know people will try to argue but it can be done.

Zakalwe:

You really just can't help yourself can you.

Lets get something straight here, people who buy the big gas guzzlers can afford to put the petrol in them and continue to waste a great deal. Taxation is doing nothing to stop them.

On the other hand, those of us who do have small economical cars, not just because of the enviroment, but because of our pockets and who don't drive unless it's essential are being driven into the ground by this fuel duty, not the price per barrel, the fuel duty and that makes it even more difficult to retain any kind of lifestyle, let alone the deluded grandiose version of lifestyle you seem to think 'everyone' has.

For god sake, either go out for a bike ride or get some prozak because if your only contribution is to continue to repeat yourself about things we already know, you are as guilty as those you perceive to be causing the problem.

You've already identified that Brown is an arse, if no political pressure is put on this government, how on earth do you think your imminant appocalypse is going to be lessened?

Fuel is running out? ..duh ..yes we know ...problems ahead? ..duh ..yes we know, so how is you sitting on your butt discouraging anyone from doing anything going to help?

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and earn a living.

Of cuorse if you hvae nthonig btteer to do wtih yuor tmie tahn crtisice my spllenig and you feel btteer and mroe imoprantt auobt yuorslef ocne yuo've crroected an unedcutaed bffuon like me, tehn tahts fnie by me as wlel!

Bernie: It seems stating the obvious is needed for a lot of people still, which is why I have to do it and tire of it myself.

Want solutions? Sure, I've listed them on this blog before. Numerous times. Buy a more efficient car. Live locally to your work place, or find work closer to you. Drive economically doing 55 on main roads, not getting impatient and overtaking someone who dares obey the speed limit. Drive less; do you really have to go and drive into town for a few groceries you can get during the weekly shop? Do you really need to drop the kids off at school a block away in your monster SUV you never take off-road?

That is all you're going to get. The government is not going to cut tax, much as Transaction 2007 might delude themselves into thinking, and they're certainly not going to start funding your shift to a more viable way of life. Not when they promise to tackle climate change one day and then expand airports "for the benefit of the economy" the next. The government is in it for the money, not altruism. If Brown truly understood the issues we have with resource limits and then climate change on top of that, he wouldn't be spewing empty platitudes on TV and then taking actions that fly in the face of what people want. But hey, since the government believes the IEA reports from the early 2000s on oil supply keeping pace with demand until 2030, and since they based all their planning for the economy up till then on such reports; as far as they're concerned, everything will be A-OK. The problems with oil price now are merely a blip, and not part of a growing trend. Too bad the reports today all but state in black and white "We were wrong. We're in real trouble now if those mega-projects don't pan out".

We're not 7-years-old and I don't feel I have to lie to you about everything being okay, because so long as we live in a society that values success as how fast the economy constantly grows, there will be little to be done about rising prices at the pump and at the supermarket check-out.

This whole fuel affair is a part of these events, so nothing I've stated is irrelevant here. You can't get cheap petrol if more people are using more of a finite resource, and the price rises lately are down to oil shifting up, not the two pence Brown has put on after years of keeping the tax stable. The overarching problem is population growth; the immediate problem is oil production failing to keep pace with that. It'll be food next, and then rare earth metals, phosphate, fresh water and various other things we kind've need to survive, but I hear the economy will have collapsed by that point (who'd have thought reckless credit expenditure would kill the economy?). What's that? My attitude is pessimistic because I'm not saying the Technology God or pure human spirit will bring us through smelling of roses? That's too bad. Deal with it. What we face has never been faced by humanity before in 10,000 years of recorded history. We are still animals and still obey ecology and any species that overshoots its maximum population limit is fracked. The max sustainable population for this planet with modern Western living standards is one billion people, tops. You do the maths.

Oh, and cute comment about the grammar (that's with an "a"). I guess it is silly of me to expect legibility on a textual medium in the person's first language. Mebbe we shud tlk liek dis an fck eNglish totaly, ya feel me?!?!?!?!! LOLZ

Reading all those comments, just confirms how utterly and hopelessly dependent we are on a destructive and deadly piece of technology called a car. I am flabbergasted at the exchange of insults and the desperation that is inherent in many of the posts. I shudder to think what will happen when the oil runs out? Just looking at the horrific scenes from Kenya gives a foretaste of the anarchy that lies ahead when the wells run dry - as they are surely and not nearly as lsowly as before. Oil depletion is a geological reality that is unavoidable - Fact.

Now that oil has broken the 100 Dollar a barrel mark, some oil strategists predict that the whole industrial culture will at some point start breaking down and that a world without oil, is not a world that can support 6 billion human beings. It is not a world that can support 3 billion. It may not even be a world that can support one billion, as transportation, power and other oil-dependent products and services will become much more expensive.

We must realise now that attaining a “reasonable lifestyle” cannot be accomplished with sledgehammer tactics of the past. So let's stop the typical rants of an "excuse culture", drop the riotous verbals and start look for solutions, like learning to live more gently on the planet - so as our kids can have one worth living on too.

Finally could I suggest a good read while you are on the train or relaxing in your new era of "half the pay and twice the life mode" - Dr Brian Czech's "Shovelling Fuel for a Runaway Train - Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All..." It may help?

Zakalwe:

Can you do us a favour and stop stating the obvious, it's clear you love to see yourself in type, but seeing as apart from tackling the population problem you have no useful comment to add to the discussion, can you please stop answering everyones post with the same old rethoric.

There are solutions and partial solutions to the some of the problems, because life can and will go on regardless of change and your gloomy outlook.

What we're not seeing is any movement toward this change and as I stated in a previous post I'm not allowed to use or deploy any of the ones that are clearly available now.

What we'd like to see is some kind of movement toward a viable way of life instead of just sitting here being ripped off everyday while incompetent government squander their ill gotten gains all over the place and people like you continue to tell us what we already know.

By the way, is my grammer to your satisfaction, or should I just kill myself now?

63: Never. It won't end, because there are no more seas full of phytoplankton and lands full of dinosaurs being crushed and cooked to be ready to pump into your tank.

Let's suppose for a minute that Transaction 2007 magically become competent and get Brown to see reason and cut fuel duty by 50% (LOL). Fuel falls to, say, 60p/litre. The loss of revenue from fuel duty is then, most likely, made up elsewhere, for instance, by increasing duty on alcohol or certain other public services.

Oil, meanwhile, continues its inexorable rise as traders finally cotton on to the fact that OPEC, namely Saudis, has no spare capacity and any new fields being brought on-stream are only able to off-set declines in dying fields, rather than meet new demand. The Kingdom's lack of cooling the market leads to more frantic trading; the price rises; recession and then depression looms unless demand backs down.

Pretty soon, fuel is back up to 107p/litre. Brown, or whoever finally kicks him out, is not raking it in any more, as the vast majority of the price comes from producing the petroleum. Now what? You can't lobby the Govt., they're not responsible. Big Oil isn't going to cut back, not when the margins are so slim and many garage owners will feel it even more than they do now, especially when most of them are independents and not owned by Big Oil.

I'm genuinely curious as to what you'd do then. There is a valid point about tax now, yes. But that is not going to be the end of the story by a long shot very soon.

How expensive would it have to be, in 2007 pounds, before you cut back or went bankrupt or relocated to a closer job etc.?

my local texaco has just put prices up to 107.9pplfor unl and 11.9for derv and the local tescos only 1ppl behind. when's this all going to end???

I'd not bother with LPG in the long term. Aside from the government seeing that as the next thing to tax higher, as they did diesel, gas is running short as fast as oil. There's a reason npower just put my gas bill up 27%, and it's not because the government wants more money or we've found some monster natural gas fields in Russia.

Has anyone thought of going down the LPG route?

Like everyone here, it's not nice paying over £1 a litre for fuel.

I've researched the LPG route, driving 10000 miles a year doing 30MPG on average will save around 700 quid a year!

It's an expensive way to save money but as long as the LPG price stays 50% lower than Unleaded it seems worth it.

With a conversion for my Alfa Spider costing £1100, it would only take 18 months to pay for itself!

Unfortunately there is no option for public transport. I do know someone who travels from Wellington-Taunton (Somerset) and pays £5.70 return each day. It's cheaper to drive even at the current petrol prices!

then dont read it whats yer problem i came on here to state what i think about the situation and because i dont use .....,,,, you got to reply to that


I shall do better, The next time for you..


My local is now 106.99 for petrol ..

Darren Ross: Good grief, man. Commas, full stops. Use them. Reading that was painful.

To address one point though, the price of food rising so much is down to various factors, not just energy costs. It's more like a positive feedback loop, actually. The current fad is bio-fuels (the ridiculousness of them is another can o' worms), which means a greater amount of the crops produced today go into your fuel tank, not your stomach. That is having a massive effect on food retailers and we're already seeing the global grain stock reach an all time low with respect to days of supply left. China and India are also gobbling up a lot of food to go with their steel, oil and all other fine resources.

Getting over the stupid bio-fuel notion will alleviate the price somewhat. However, given energy prices are going up thanks to peaking oil and gas (see the npower hike today and continued draw in US gasoline and diesel stocks), it will probably be short lived in effect. Energy underlies all activity, so as long as it is expensive -- and it sure as hell isn't going to get cheaper any more -- so too will everything else.

The argument should be at the goverment this country does jacks shite really we sit back and take it user frendly ozone rubbish unleaded is suppose to be user friendly the price needs to drop and soon or as a fellow guys posted on here there will be no point in going to work in all aspects prices are far to dear a loaf of bread is about £1.07 pence wages do not rise enough to keep up with it im curious how much is it for unleaded in say jersey

they can cut something of this the prices are far to dear i live in a rual area i need my car its about 104 average for me at a min prices should be at 92 at most

REPLY TO 45

Unleaded for Mondays delivery (About $100. a barrel)

Cost of product 34.31 pence per litre (Excludes VAT, Duty, Retailer profit or distribution costs)

Add on garage and Fuel company profit and VAT and you would pay 45.6 pence for a litre of unleaded

However Base Cost = 34.31p
Duty = 50.35p
Split Profit = 4.50p
VAT = 15.60p
Retail price for Monday should be = 104.8p

SUMMARY

Price with no Duty no VAT = 38.81 pence a Litre
Price with no Duty but with VAT = 45.6 pence a litre
Price with Duty plus VAT plus VAT on Duty = 104.8 pence a Litre

Things will get interesting

Even at $100 a barrel, the price of petrol without any tax would only be somewhere around 40 to 50p a litre

(I'm sure someone who runs a garage can supply the exact figure if necessary)

Even if you add VAT at 17.5% it's still around 57 to 59p a litre.

Nope, I'm afraid, it's not the fuel companies that are to blame for this, it is our government, our caring, nanny government.

Lieing theiving bartenders, every last one of them.

Being disabled using a car is the only way I can leave the confines of my home. Every penny that goes onto the cost of a litre of petrol means that there are going to be less trips for me away from my home. There are many thousands of people in the same position yet this caring government still insists on causing this increase in the cost of fuel due to over taxing this product. It's not the oil companies to blame just our beloved government. There will be people who will end up losing their employment due to the over-inflated prices but none of them will be MP's. Thats food for thought.

Oil has just passed $100/barrel. Things are about to get interesting.

Let us not forget the point ...'Petrol is cheap in 2008' ...it's the fuel duty.

Petroleum companies and production costs are not to blame, our Government is.

Just as everyone is beginning to think that they should jump on a train instead of in the car, they announce a huge ticket price increase there as well.

It's now cheaper to fly to New York than it is to travel by train from Manchester to London.

This is nothing to do with a sick planet, this is to do with a government so incompetent and so arogant it believes everyone is stupid enough to fall for this nonsense.

Understand, that my impression was you just didn't give a damn anyway and felt it okay to go ahead and party whilst the world burned. It seems useless today because just about everyone is that way. It's not your fault, but a flaw in our psychology. Yes, there have always been threats and alarmism is now a perfected art in the mass media. This, however, is a different story. The media doesn't blurt on about it daily because of either ignorance or finding a more interesting story with Paris Hilton or a footballer. Or because it would scare people.

I am a cynic myself. Although I was not around in the '70s, the past year with my realisation of what lies in store for us has turned me into a real pessimist. I tried to fight it and help friends and family and start an initiative in my home village, but people either didn't care or said the doomsaying only made them feel they could do nothing but go out with a bang.

By all means, accept that we are powerless now. The time for a smooth transition was decades ago, when Carter was talking about such things and no one cared once OPEC opened the taps again. The Club of Rome report was wrong because of those events. Oil didn't hit a peak in the '90s as they predicted. Instead, the slow '70s and '80s pushed it back a decade to now.

Ultimately, this is the problem. Tax is high, to be sure and I don't love Labour or the Tories for fracking us over with such high fuel duty, but at least it means there is something of a blanket for a limited while that can be used to buffer higher oil prices. Cutting on duty means we could take a bigger price rise given we're used to such costs now. In the US where such tax is minimal, they find any increase today harsh (at the lower end of the spectrum, that is. The rich still buy huge SUVs with rubbish mileage).

It'd be almost comical incompetence for a species supposedly so smart, if only so many people weren't going to die from overshoot.

As an aside, the word filter on this website is PITIFULLY childish. If "Screw-ing" is a, oh my gosh, BAD WORD, then I sure hope no one under the age of 5 is reading this. I love the self-imposed Orwellian new-speak.

They tried to scare me in the 60's - neuclear holocaust!!!, the 70's - I've still got my petrol rationing booklet, there was supposed to be no more oil by the 90's! The 80's- Aids was going to kill us all!!! The 90's??? God knows it was then I gave up listening to what ever it was that I was supposed to feel guilty about. Now it's terror and global warming, so excuse me if I'm too cynical for my own good. There's always something isn't there? I used to have scary sleepless nights wondering if the matress in the doorway would really save me.
I hope I don't have a "screw everyone else attitude", I like to think I believe everyone has the right to do as they please within reason (and the law) as long as there not hurting anyone OR forcing their way onto someone else. As for opinions everyone is entitled to their's but wouldn't it be nice if folk didn't get so upset when they find their's isn't accepted by anyone else?
I don't like the taxes either you know but we'll be fleeced one way or another. If it's 50p off a litre of fuel you can be sure it'll mean 70p onto a breathing tax or some other cr*p!!!!!!!
Of course Zakalwe's (post 48) just confirms my negative views on some people ie: resort to personal insult when you can't bear to accept that some people have their own take on life (especially without knowing the circumstances that brought them to their particular point in life).
There's people in very high places of power who can't change anything, there's people with millions of pounds who can't do it - so I guess I've just accepted I'm not important enough to change anything either, but then isn't that what I'm supposed to do? Bleedin ell how did I get drawn into this? my head hurts Ha,Ha! So guess what I just want to enjoy myself while I can (Kids say they still love me anyway so that's one less worry