Petrol prices - just the facts...

[simplicio]

Sad but true...I've recorded every petrol puchase I've made since 1990. :eek: Finally got around to graphing the numbers (see attached pdf doc). Look's like we all got a really good deal in the 1990's.

[ozwinner]

Soooo?

Its keeping up with cpi?
So what?

Al :confused:

[bitingmidge]

Thanks Oz (and simplico)!

My kids often tell me how hard it is with the price of petrol etc, and I use exactly that graph to show them that they are no worse off!

If the Government was fair dinkum, it'd bung a 50% surcharge on petrol, and USE the money to build a serious public transport infrastructure.

That way, just the rich blokes like Oz and I would have the roads to ourselves!

Cheers,

P

[Cliff Rogers]

Have a friend just back from Germany, it's 1.3E/L over there, that's about $2.10AU.

Just be thankfull that your car doesn't run on Coke.

What about the good old days.... in September 1976 I went to Adelaide & was surprised to see that they were paying 13.2cents/litre, it was only 12.8cents/litre back in Brissy at the time.
Back then it cost a $1.65 for a pack of Marlboro Red, a bottle of soft drink & a sandwich. (lunch )

[namtrak]

And they say the gulf wars aren't about oil - give me a break!!!!

I believe the CPI is being generated by the price of oil not the other way around

[bitingmidge]

I believe the CPI is being generated by the price of oil not the other way around

That's a bit curious.

I've been thinking about that lately, in so far as it effects me, so here goes:

Fuel has gone up by around 25% or say 30c per litre (for simplicity), now if a car gets 10l / 100 k, that's an extra 3c per k, so if the real cost of running that car is say 85c or so per k, total running costs have gone up by something less than 3.5%.

Given that transport (trucks etc) should be many, many times more efficient (in a cost per kg carried sense), we start to get interesting figures:

Let's say we have a business with an extra-ordinarily high freight cost of 10% of our turnover (this is so high as to be absurd!) and let's give trucks the benefit of the doubt and apply the same increase as our car has cost us (it's probably less than half that in reality), then the increase cost to our business is 3.5% of 10% or .0035% (or maybe I've got one 0 too many in there) but in any case, it's not huge at all.

What we are seeing at the moment, is companies who have absolutely no idea what the real costs are, adding arbitary "fuel levies" and making a big bonus.

Next time a courier charges you an extra "fuel levy" ask him how he can justify it on a per parcel basis?

Cheers,

P

[kiwigeo]

Wanna complain about the price of petrol?...check the price next time you buy a litre of spring water.

I find it hard to believe that producing a litre of water costs more than producing a litre of petrol.....you dont need an oil rig costing $90,000 a day and a $10 million per well budget to pull water out of the ground. You dont need a multi million dollar refinery to get water from a well to the market place.

Something doesnt gel here.

[Kev Y.]

What are you guys on about.. :confused:

Petrol is not that expensive where I am..all I pay is .55c per liter

Mind you that is bowser price less fleet discount (lease car) then take into account I am paying pre-tax (48.5 cents for tax, salary sacricfe) so for me its not soo expensive.

I hate to think how I will cope once the lease expires

[bitingmidge]

I reckon if you can't afford petrol, you should just buy a more efficient vehicle.
P

[namtrak]

........Fuel has gone up by around 25% or say 30c per litre (for simplicity), now if a car gets 10l / 100 k, that's an extra 3c per k, so if the real cost of running that car is say 85c or so per k, total running costs have gone up by something less than 3.5%........What we are seeing at the moment, is companies who have absolutely no idea what the real costs are, adding arbitary "fuel levies" and making a big bonus.

Agreed absolutely, I am saying the increasing CPI is being generated by the rise in the price of oil, however I definitely don't think the increasing CPI is justified by the rise in the price of oil.

Like your saying given the fuel prices are only rising around 5% for a freight company and fuel only accounts for say somewhere around 10-15% of overall costs then a price rise on any given item should be around .5% That is, by my basic (possibly an understatement) maths a 3 litre carton of milk should rise from around $2.90 to about $2.93 and that should cover fuel costs across the production of the carton.

Cheers

[anthonyd]

Wanna complain about the price of petrol?...check the price next time you buy a litre of spring water.

I find it hard to believe that producing a litre of water costs more than producing a litre of petrol.....you dont need an oil rig costing $90,000 a day and a $10 million per well budget to pull water out of the ground. You dont need a multi million dollar refinery to get water from a well to the market place.

Something doesnt gel here.

Difference is that the sellers of spring water only have a target market of a small percentage of the population (Do you really believe that there is a small spring somewhere up in the mountain with 1000's of trucks running up and down the mountain collecting water from it?). On the other hand the number of consumers of petrol is massively larger. More quantity means lower margins for the same profit!

That being said I agree - bottled water is a ripoff. In a country with perfectly drinkable tap water it is also unnecessary!

A bit offtopic - there was a test done in South Africa a few years back when bottled "spring" water started becomming popular. The tests found traces of ecoli bacteria in all the bottled water. Only water that tested ecoli free was the tap water because it had clorine in it! So if you enjoy drinking $hit then go for that bottled water!

[nic]

What worries me the most with the petrol prices is that no one is taking into account the AUD/USD fx rate !!!

If you do nothing makes sense, oil goes up and AUD get's stronger by roughly same percent and we still end up paying a lot more.

Overall the oil price has risen, but from 01-02 to now the USD has lost about 35-40% and crude has not gone up around 30-40% so someone is making a huge profit somewhere.

nic

[kiwigeo]

Difference is that the sellers of spring water only have a target market of a small percentage of the population (Do you really believe that there is a small spring somewhere up in the mountain with 1000's of trucks running up and down the mountain collecting water from it?). On the other hand the number of consumers of petrol is massively larger. More quantity means lower margins for the same profit!

Even with size of the market for bottled water taken into account, I think if you look at the cost of producing a litre of water and whats involved and compare it to the cost of prodicig a litre of petrol...the water is still outrageously over priced.

Right now I'm at work sitting out on an oil rig looking for the stuff they make petrol from. Just to have this rig sitting here doing nothing would set you back about $80,000 a day. Add in all the extras and daily costs for drilling a well sky rocket to about $250,000 a day. Start looking for oil in deep water and your rig day rate can hit as high as $300,000 a day (base rate).

The above is just a fraction of the cost of producing a litre of petrol from a barrel of oil. You've then got shipping and refining costs.

As for 1000's of trucks running up the mountain and collecting it.....youre not far wrong. More than one major operator in the Adelaide Hills does virtually that. Up the mountain to a spring, truck it to a plant and stick it in bottles. Alot less complicated than turning oil into petrol.

Cheers Martin

[Gingermick]

I reckon if you can't afford petrol, you should just buy a more efficient vehicle.
P

CT110

budget to pull water out of the ground. You dont need a multi million dollar refinery to get water from a well to the market place.

The girls that they use to transport the water must cost a bit though. If they have to walk to the sping, dip their heads in the water, walk back down the hill and wring their wet hair out into the new bottles. That would cost, and I think that's the way some of them operate.

[Bodgy]

Given that oil is a finite and declining resource, I'd make two points:

a. The price of petrol is quite reasonable in Oz
b. In a couple of years we'll all be looking back to 2005 and saying how cheap it was.

There are a few methods of setting RRP's. The two main are cost plus and market. In the former you look at your costs to develop, produce, market and deliver and put a % mark up on top. The second is simply charging what people (market) will pay.

I know little about the oil business, but I presume fuel prices are based (loosely) on the former and bottled water on the second. I never cease to be surprised by the number of idiots there are in the world. One can never underestimate the gullibility of the consumer. Marketers know this, hence the price of bottled water. Strange but true - if you dropped the price, you'd probably sell less (water not petrol). Diminished wank factor.