Drivers were facing a £20 limit on fuel spending yesterday as panic buying intensified at Scotland’s filling stations.
Despite calls to motorists not to drain supplies, at least one station had to resort to rationing petrol and diesel.
Other filling station managers reported drivers losing their tempers in long queues.
Chris Furphy imposed at £20 maximum purchase for fuel at his Jet station in Dalmuir, Clydebank, in a bid to conserve stocks.
The move infuriated some of his customers.
Chris said: “It has been going mad in here all day, and the staff have been getting a lot of abuse.
“One woman stuck in £60, despite signs at every pump saying there was a £20 limit.
Western civilization is frighteningly dependent on motor fuel. Scenes of violence resulted the last time there was a rumour of shortages in England. The government sent out messages not to panic, but National Health Service managers were simultaneously instructing all employees (and the NHS is one of the biggest employers in the UK) to fill up early and fill up often!
If there were to be a real shortage, lasting say a couple of weeks or a month, many lives would be lost I fear.
£20 buys just under 5 US gallons, about 4 UK gallons.
Price increases quell panic buying quickly.
Remember that 60 pounds is equal to just over $120 !! for a fillup
We have been driving hybrid automobiles for eight years and have improved our overall fuel economy as a family by 68%. If the Administration had acted seven years ago to require higher automobile fuel economy with technology we had available at the beginning of its term, perhaps America would have reduced significantly its demand for oil and we wouldn’t have the run up in fuel costs we are seeing now. Furthermore, maybe Detroit would have been envy of the auto industry instead of Japan. And, maybe this economy would have been able to weather the storm because of all the energy jobs a visionary energy policy would have created. Shortages lead to high prices for everyone.
#2: if only! Experience in the UK is that after everyone’s finished grumbling about the latest price increase, they’re as addicted as ever they were.
It’s horribly like drug addiction, it really is. Increase the price all you like, but the addicts will just stop buying food, or turn to crime to feed their habit.
BTW, I am looking for a gently used Expedition, Tahoe or Suburban. Thirty to fifty thousand miles, from someone who is panicking and wants to sell cheap for the false economy of a $35K Prius. Leave your email in the thread for this post.
Anybody know what the price in US dollars for a US gallon is in the UK? I thinking it must be aroun $7.00 or so.
#7 CharlesB
I believe it is about #8.00 a gallon (equivanlent) The last time I enquired of family there it was 1 pound per litre
Those were the days, #8! According to http://www.petrolprices.com/ it’s now about £1.10 per litre, or £4.16 per US gallon, so I make that around $8.29. So I have to think rather hard before I take my 15mpg [url=http://boc.net/type_603.php]Bristol 603[/url] for a spin…
#5. #9. CPKS,
Yes, it is like an addiction, but in the US, more like an addiction to air or water. Our system is designed so that you cannot work or shop for food without a car (at least for 80+% of the population.
Also yes, well over $8/US gallon in the UK. But compared to US driving distances, UK drivers may have trips about half as long in cars about twice as efficient. This would make fuel have an equivalent impact of $2/US gallon. Taxes in the UK must be now around $5/US gallon. That is quite high and would give some flexibility in case oil prices double from here.
#10, regarding distances – of course, what you say is what you’d expect. However, I believe that the accepted average milage for a domestic car in the UK is around 12,000 miles per year, and from a source [url=http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080108094918AALNZ3c&show=7]here[/url] it appears not all that different from the USA.
Although, theoretically, the smaller distances and scale of town centres here would enable people to do most of their shopping on foot (as they did 60 years ago), in practice most food outlets nowadays are huge megastores (selling more or less everything under one roof) that are situated on the outer boundaries of conurbations. We are utterly dependent on motor fuel to stock them up, and likewise to get to them from our homes. Given easy transport, we adapt our lifestyle to take advantage of the advantages it brings; and this is a gradual evolution over many years, during which we become more and more dependent on the motor car. But a fuel shortage is sudden and catastrophic. We don’t have years and years to evolve back to the way we were. We have painted ourselves into a corner!
#11, I would guess the average vehicle in the US goes more like 16,000, but I do not have hard figures. I would also guess there are far more vehicles per person in the US. The real figure to look at would be the gallon equivalent of fuel burned per person per year in each country. My guess is it is about double in the US, perhaps a bit more. We have developed a totally vehiculiar way of life and we have not been especially efficient about it. Until the last 30 years fuel has been essentially free and until the last 3 years really did not cost that much.
When I go to the UK or elsewhere in Europe, I see cars that are much more efficient (and smaller) in keeping with the scale of the towns and cities. I also see much more walking. When working in Geneva, we thought nothing of walking two miles through the city to work near the UN. After walking back to the hotel, we would walk two miles the other direction for dinner. Sure it’s 8 miles of walking per day and it keeps you healthy. In 20 such assignments, I never had a rental car, maybe was in a taxi twice and a bus twice. The train to and from the airport was perfect.
I hear what you are saying about the parts of the UK out of the major cities. I had numerous assignments at Cambridge and there getting a rental car at Heathrow was the only way.
Nuclear power and electric cars is a technologically available way of getting oil out of the personal transportation equation. It may be our best option, but it will take some years to build the infrastructure.
In the meantime there may be some ways of bring down the price of oil. What does it take to get Saudi oil out of the ground $1 to $2 per barrel? It seems to me they are using the oil as a terror tactic and probably siphoning some of the profit off for terrorist use. What do we have they would like in return for cheaper oil? Some there would probably say getting our military out of their native lands. I do not know if that would help or not. I do know it would be helpful to them to hear (and understand) the gospel. I am somewhat pessimistic about that happening — we’ll probably get electric cars sooner.
I looked up per capita oil consumption on nationmaster.com . They provide data from a specific year, with most falling within one year of 2004. It is listed in bbl/day/1000people. A barrel is 42gal US, so I have converted these data to gal/day/person. This usage would be for all purposes,including heating and generation of electricity:
13. Canada 3.02 gal/day/person
15. US 2.98
24. Netherlands 2.44
31. Australia 1.85
32. Japan 1.85
38. Sweden 1.60
43. Switzerland 1.51
48. Germany 1.34
51. UK 1.30
71. Mexico 0.80
73. Russia 0.71
111. Egypt 0.34
170. N. Korea 0.05
189. Uganda 0.02
Most of the European countries are using no more than one-half the oil per capita that we do in the States. As to quality of life, there are too many subjective differences to make comparison, but they are roughly the same and few would argue the quality of life is reduced in Europe by using less oil.
CPKS [#5]: Price increases quell panic buying. They don’t cure addiction. Given enough time, they encourage addicts to get by with less.