Price of Petrol: How far away is $2 / litre? Then $3 / litre?

Forums › Off topic › Price of Petrol: How far away is $2 / litre? Then $3 / litre?

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#412578 3-Dec-2010 17:26

wellygary:
They actually make bugger all cash out of selling petrol/diesel at the retail level, their big $$$s are in the ice creams, drinks and whatever else they can cram into the store they make you go through to pay.

And that's why all those station with pay at pump machines have them covered - to force people inside the store and upsell.

tardtasticx: What annoys me, is that the petrol stations all rise the price of petrol as soon as the international price goes up, so they're selling the petrol left in the big tanks that they paid say $2.20/L for $3 so they make a huge profit until their big storage tanks need refilling

No, what is really strange is that all different brands charge the same for petrol - even though you would think they probably have different costs - different number of employees, different locations, different logistics.

Are they telling us their price at the pump is the same because they all have the same costs? That would be "unpossible".

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#412601 3-Dec-2010 19:01

freitasm:
wellygary:
They actually make bugger all cash out of selling petrol/diesel at the retail level, their big $$$s are in the ice creams, drinks and whatever else they can cram into the store they make you go through to pay.

And that's why all those station with pay at pump machines have them covered - to force people inside the store and upsell.

tardtasticx: What annoys me, is that the petrol stations all rise the price of petrol as soon as the international price goes up, so they're selling the petrol left in the big tanks that they paid say $2.20/L for $3 so they make a huge profit until their big storage tanks need refilling

No, what is really strange is that all different brands charge the same for petrol - even though you would think they probably have different costs - different number of employees, different locations, different logistics.

Are they telling us their price at the pump is the same because they all have the same costs? That would be "unpossible".

maybe all petrol/oil companies are owned by the same giant mega corporation :O Scary thought. Lol

richms

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#412617 3-Dec-2010 20:01

Friend advised it was 2.somethign when he filled today at a mobil with the good stuff. Only a matter of weeks before the diet grade gets there.

Richard rich.ms

blakamin

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#412654 3-Dec-2010 21:37

freitasm:

No, what is really strange is that all different brands charge the same for petrol - even though you would think they probably have different costs - different number of employees, different locations, different logistics.

Are they telling us their price at the pump is the same because they all have the same costs? That would be "unpossible".

You'd get a good laugh by sitting down Port Rd in Seaview and watching the different branded trucks leaving the one depot....

Linuxluver

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#412915 4-Dec-2010 23:34

blakamin:
freitasm:

No, what is really strange is that all different brands charge the same for petrol - even though you would think they probably have different costs - different number of employees, different locations, different logistics.

Are they telling us their price at the pump is the same because they all have the same costs? That would be "unpossible".

You'd get a good laugh by sitting down Port Rd in Seaview and watching the different branded trucks leaving the one depot....

I've been told it's all the same stuff from Marsden Point. Then I;ve also been told they refine in batches...and some companies put in slightly different additives. Without being an insider, I don't know... :-)

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Linuxluver

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#412918 4-Dec-2010 23:39

oxnsox:

Electric cars need batteries and the biggest problem there is there isn't nearly enough lithium to go around. Bolivia supplies 50% of the world's lithium. There is talk we will run out of lithium in 10 to 15 years. It seems a crime to me that Everready make use-once, throw away lithium batteries.

Soo,.... is the real race, what we will run out of first as a fuel source (lithium/petrol) or finding a viable alternative???

The message in "The Long Emergency" is that there are no "viable alternatives". Even if you can power your car, how will you power the industry that BUILDS the cars? Today they all use cheap oil to do everything from getting the ore out of the ground for the steel....to making the seat covers. Everything. Then remember the (disappearing) gas used to make fertiliser grow the food and the cheap oil that powers the farm machinery and every vehicle in the anufacturing and distribution chain....which can extend around the world....all to feed everyone in the chain, including you. Then after we eat, we make the cars.....

What you put in the tank is almost irrelevant. *Everything* we do today depends on cheap oil. As the supply becomes more limited in the decades ahead.....who gets cut loose?

Read the book, if you can.....Kuntsler explains every step of the way why inadequate supplies of oil will break many, many processes we don't even realise we rely on every day...and many of those do not have viable alternatives. Entire industries will disappear....or re-locate.

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freitasm

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#412919 4-Dec-2010 23:40

Even so, oil/petrol is only one component of the price. There are many others.

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#412923 4-Dec-2010 23:53

NokiaRocks: hopefully this; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406102555.htm will help relieve energy worries when it gets developed for mainstream use

I suspect heating the water to 100C and running the lights will consume more power than would be rendered by burning the hydrogen.....This is the reason Kuntsler completely discounts hydrogen as a power source. There is (apparently) no way you can break up water into H and O without putting more energy in than you can get out by burning hydrogen the hydrogen you have extracted.

Kuntsler says making hydrogen is easy....but making it with less energy than you get out of it is likely not possible.

So what power source do you use? The Sun would do it.....but very slowly and not everywhere. What energy source do you use to make the equipment to perform the transformation? Many of these "solutions" are based on having a cheap oil industrial base available to make the equipment to provide the 'solution'.

Without the cheap oil industrial base.....the need to put in more energy than you can get out if becomes a REAL problem.

The articles doesn't mention volumes or how long it takes. The volume of hydrogen required to a car for a day's driving is apparently quite a lot...and to get it into the vehicle it would have to stored at very high pressures....dangerously high.

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Mattnzl

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#412939 5-Dec-2010 07:12

I good article I read yesterday:

"Think of oil this way: when we first started extracting oil, about 100 years ago, for every barrel of oil used to power extraction, 17 barrels of new oil were produced. That was a 17:1 ratio. Today, the ration has fallen to something closer to 6:1. Why has this happened? It’s because we’ve already exploited all of the easily accessible oil, and we’re now having to spend more money (and energy) on extracting oil in places which are harder to get to, such as on continental shelves or in deep waters like the Gulf of Mexico.

We’re also increasing supplies from unconventional sources, such as the Alberta Tar Sands, where the ratio of return is estimated at being closer to 3:1."

http://www.thesudburystar.com/Blogs/ViewCommunityPage.aspx?BlogID=9209

tardtasticx

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#412973 5-Dec-2010 10:36

91 UL was $1.87/L at Gull yesterday when I drove past. Lucky I dont have to drive to and from school for the next 2 months. Lol

Linuxluver

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#413013 5-Dec-2010 13:08

Mattnzl: I good article I read yesterday:

"Think of oil this way: when we first started extracting oil, about 100 years ago, for every barrel of oil used to power extraction, 17 barrels of new oil were produced. That was a 17:1 ratio. Today, the ration has fallen to something closer to 6:1. Why has this happened? It’s because we’ve already exploited all of the easily accessible oil, and we’re now having to spend more money (and energy) on extracting oil in places which are harder to get to, such as on continental shelves or in deep waters like the Gulf of Mexico.

We’re also increasing supplies from unconventional sources, such as the Alberta Tar Sands, where the ratio of return is estimated at being closer to 3:1."

http://www.thesudburystar.com/Blogs/ViewCommunityPage.aspx?BlogID=9209

The tar sands are a disaster already in progress. The "tar" is oil that leaked to the surface thousands of years ago and mixed with soil and sand at the surface. Across a huge area. To get that oil they will have to physically scrape the topsoil off a land area that is incredibly vast. To "wash" the sand out of the oil - at high pressure and heat - takes vast quantities of water and energy...and it poisons the water making it unsuitable for sustaining life - wild or domesticated. This is already producing huge problems and opposition to turning a huge chunks of western Canada into de facto moonscapes with poisoned soils and undrinkable water is growing rapidly. Canada has only been able to do it because the people mainly affected so far - land taken away, water poisoned - are isolated communities of native peoples....and white Canadians care as much about them as white Kiwis care about Maori and their land grievances. One issue is that many of those tribes never signed a treaty and - technically, under Canadian law - they are still sovereign on their land.....not that that stops anyone from taking it and turning it into a moonscape. Though in most cases it's just the villages downstream from the tar sands moonscapes who get their drinking water and fish from the now-polluted waters of the wrecked rivers that have sustained them for centuries....Privatise the profits and socialise the cost of environmental devastation.

The overt "legal" piracy of the colonial era never really ended.

The cost of repairing the land - even if it were possible - places the REAL cost of tar sands extraction into the deficit zone. Clearly, the people quoting "3:1" aren't planning to fix anything. Kuntsler quotes a figure of 1:1.4...much more marginal. Numbers are malleable things.

I'm Canadian originally, though I've lived in NZ for just under 30 years. The tar sands have always been a litmus test for just how stupid and greedy lazy we as a species might be to sustain what isn't sustainable. Looks like we really are that incredibly stupid.

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Linuxluver

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#413028 5-Dec-2010 13:41

Mattnzl: I good article I read yesterday:

"Think of oil this way: when we first started extracting oil, about 100 years ago, for every barrel of oil used to power extraction, 17 barrels of new oil were produced. That was a 17:1 ratio. Today, the ration has fallen to something closer to 6:1. Why has this happened? It’s because we’ve already exploited all of the easily accessible oil, and we’re now having to spend more money (and energy) on extracting oil in places which are harder to get to, such as on continental shelves or in deep waters like the Gulf of Mexico.

We’re also increasing supplies from unconventional sources, such as the Alberta Tar Sands, where the ratio of return is estimated at being closer to 3:1."

http://www.thesudburystar.com/Blogs/ViewCommunityPage.aspx?BlogID=9209

I'll have to look that IEA report up. "The Long Emergency" was written in 2005 (with minor updates since)...and at that point it wasn't clear that global oil production had peaked.

But the IEA apparently now says oil production did peak in 2005-2006. That means we're already on the downward leg.....not to "running out of oil".....but to the more expensive oil...and soon.

Interesting that as oil was peaking in 2005 I remember Don Brash and National and the Fairfax - DomPost - and APN - NZ Herald - newspapers laughing at the Green Party for suggesting such thing.

Once *again*....we find out years later the Greens were right and the people who laughed at them were wrong.

I wonder how many times we'll go round that circle before Joe Public works it out?

Also interesting is that this story about oil production peaking 5 years ago didn't get much coverage despite being arguably the biggest REAL story, in terms of significance for our civilisation..... since the fall of communism 20 years ago.

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DonGould

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#413032 5-Dec-2010 14:07

The real disgrace is the amount of energy that goes into pushing the car forward v's what goes up in heat/smoke.

Electric cars are far more friendly on energy conversion AIUI.

langers1972

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#417564 15-Dec-2010 12:02

langers1972:

$2/ltr by Feb 2011 is my bet

Close but no cigar

gjm

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#417580 15-Dec-2010 12:41

yup, at $2 a pop Ive reached my limit and am now dusting off the bicycle and am going to start riding in to work. Probably better for my health (assuming I dont get run over), the environment and my pocket. It will probably be just as quick considering the amount of time I get stuck in traffic.

Maybe we should hope that the oil slick they had in the US makes its way to NZ and we can just go to the beach to fill up

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