Petrol price 'rigged for a decade'

drunkmonkey

Looks like we've been ripped off by Shell & BP http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10057460/Petrol-price-rigged-for-a-decade.html anyone know how to make a claim for a partial refund.

I get about 30mpg so that's about 1 litre every 10 miles, I drive about 30,000 miles a year at an average cost of 1.50 a litre so that's about €4,500 a year, been driving for 20 years so that's €90,000 give or take a few euro that I've spent on fuel.

I'm going to be conservative here and say at the very minimum I'm owed €9,000 in over paid fuel costs.

Looks like there's a few of us in for a payout : )

Voodoomelon

I see the way this ends.
Oil companies have been ripping off consumers for years.
All profits to date have been paid out. Any recourse is beyond the reach of the courts.
Any fines on these companies will be so insignificant it changes nothing, or will be so significant along with new competitive practices that prices from here on in go up.

In all cases, the consumer has lost out and will continue to lose out.

CiniO

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I get about 30mpg so that's about 1 litre every 10 miles,

That's a horrendous rounding., as 30mpg is about 1 litre per 6.6 miles.

I drive about 30,000 miles a year at an average cost of 1.50 a litre so that's about €4,500 a year,

I'd say it's rather €6820 a year.

been driving for 20 years so that's €90,000 give or take a few euro that I've spent on fuel.

€136400.
And that's assuming you paid for fuel 1.5 for the whole of last 20 years.

Tigger

CiniO wrote: »

That's a horrendous rounding., as 30mpg is about 1 litre per 6.6 miles.



I'd say it's rather €6820 a year.


€136400.
And that's assuming you paid for fuel 1.5 for the whole of last 20 years.

Lol

keithclancy

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Looks like we've been ripped off by Shell & BP http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10057460/Petrol-price-rigged-for-a-decade.html anyone know how to make a claim for a partial refund.

I get about 30mpg so that's about 1 litre every 10 miles, I drive about 30,000 miles a year at an average cost of 1.50 a litre so that's about €4,500 a year, been driving for 20 years so that's €90,000 give or take a few euro that I've spent on fuel.

I'm going to be conservative here and say at the very minimum I'm owed €9,000 in over paid fuel costs.

Looks like there's a few of us in for a payout : )

Ironic that the Government says you were being ripped off when the majority of the cost is Tax.:pac::pac::pac:

ironclaw

Are people genuinely surprised by this? Its a totally captive, monopoly market. You have to fill your car with fuel and have no choice in the matter.

But as keith said, its mostly tax anyway (50% or something?) so even if they did pay you back, it would be in the cents, not euro's per litre. Not forgetting the huge reserves we sold off on the cheap back in the 1980's and continue to do so. Price fixing is the least of our worries.

Cantona's Collars

I was watching Quentin Wilson on Sky News and he reckons the price fixing scandal goes far deeper than just the oil companies with stock market traders and more involved.He queried the reasons why oil prices rose last year despite a fall in demand worldwide.

Caliden

ironclaw wrote: »

Are people genuinely surprised by this? Its a totally captive, monopoly market. You have to fill your car with fuel and have no choice in the matter.

But as keith said, its mostly tax anyway (50% or something?) so even if they did pay you back, it would be in the cents, not euro's per litre. Not forgetting the huge reserves we sold off on the cheap back in the 1980's and continue to do so. Price fixing is the least of our worries.

http://www.pumps.ie/FAQPricesExplained.php

89 cent on every litre of petrol.

The cost before all the taxes are added? 68.75c/litre...
They have us by the short and curlies and they know it. People need to buy petrol/diesel and they can charge whatever they want.

Cantona's Collars

Caliden wrote: »

http://www.pumps.ie/FAQPricesExplained.php

89 cent on every litre of petrol.

The cost before all the taxes are added? 68.75c/litre...
They have us by the short and curlies and they know it. People need to buy petrol/diesel and they can charge whatever they want.

It's crazy and where does all this tax go? The roads are in shite.Spoke to one manager at a local petrol station and they were told not to drop the price of fuel lower that 155.9c per litre (petrol) by the supplier even though oil prices dictated that it should have been lower.They said that other suppliers wouldn't be happy,if that's not price fixing,I don't know what is.

ironclaw

zerks wrote: »

It's crazy and where does all this tax go? The roads are in shite.Spoke to one manager at a local petrol station and they were told not to drop the price of fuel lower that 155.9c per litre (petrol) by the supplier even though oil prices dictated that it should have been lower.They said that other suppliers wouldn't be happy,if that's not price fixing,I don't know what is.

But who is the worse, because if say petrol is €1.559, and the government has €0.89 on that, they are the majority 'stake holder' in the price at 57%. So even if the petroleum industry is price fixing, the governments take is still the worst.

I'm completely against any 'occupy' etc lunacy but before anyone jumps on the likes of BP etc we need to ask ourselves who's really holding us to ransom at the pumps.

pa990

A tax reduction (unlikely) would have a bigger impact on pump prices than any investigation into price fixing/cartel

Stallingrad

Not at all surprised, oil companies and ethics are as far from each other as it gets. I hope the UK Govt fines the hell out of them.

squod

Stallingrad wrote: »

Not at all surprised, oil companies and ethics are as far from each other as it gets. I hope the UK Govt fines the hell out of them.

Balls to that. Fines only encourage theft. Wealthy folks will way up the expected profit versus the expected fine and gamble the outcome.

Prison, depatriation & deportation or a good whipping FTW.

arleitiss

So will fuel price go down? I noticed it went to average of 1.54 last week?

derry

Everything the oil companies do from donkey years of motoring to us is all to rip us off as much as possible

In the 1930s era original petrol formula some bright sparks found that a modified carburetor that pre-heated the fuel so it would vaporize more into a fine gas instead of fine mist could make a ~30MPG car get nearly ~200MPG.The oil companies changed the fuel formula so that it wrecked these carburetor devises and that was the end of those fancy carburetors.

In the second world war they made a water injection system that gave the army cars,trucks and aircraft's during the war 30% extra MPG.
When the war finished all the water injectors systems were reefed out of cars ,trucks and Aircraft and the oil companies changed the fuel formula to make any water injection system solutions not work very well .

In the 1960s era through to 1970 era you could park your car and come back a year later and the car would start no trouble
Then after the mid seventies they changed the petrol fuel formula again because the newer cars were getting Catalytic reactors to make the fuel burn better to reduce smog. A new problem appeared the MPG of cars dropped again often by 20% and the fuel had 3 month life span .If you parked the car for year came back the old gone off fuel would have wrecked the fuel system .
What happened was simple the oil companies did the dodgy flour old trick of adding sawdust to the flour.What they did in that era to present era is they now added some ~5% waste oil to the petrol fuels.
The petrol fuels can have in them some 5% waste fuel that wont burn properly inside the car engine .However because this waste fuel will be hot when it comes into the hot Catalytic reactors it will burn up there .At5% ratio this is one liter of fuel in 20 liters So one liter of your fuel doesn't burn in the car engine it burns up in your Catalytic reactors which wont make your car go any faster but your paying for often with each 20 liter fill for 1 liter of crap fuel .

Then the oil companies in the 1980's found they could increase the amount of waste oil in the petrol yet again and reduce the MPG by 10% we get and so we would have to buy more fuel if they could add some 5% ethanol to the fuel.
The way to change us from the lead based fuel was to invent a lead in the fuel scare and they had the solution the ethanol fuel solution .Problem was car engines would have to lower the compression ratios of that time about 12:1 down to 10:1 as ethanol couldn't do as good a job to stop pre detonation or ping as lead fuel solutions
This was win win for the oil companies the lower compression ratio meant less power from engine less good burn and so the MPG dropped and people had to buy more fuel.Because the ethanol would help burn the fuel in more slower way than the hotter petrol fuels it would help the Catalytic reactors burn more waste oil in the Catalytic reactors .So the oil companies could add in even more waste oil to the fuel they sold us .

Some fuel experts who got suspicious that the petrol fuel we now get is so full of crud did their own home brew oil refining of the fuel they bought in the garage .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY6stOum0wM&feature=player_embedded


For home brew refining of the the petrol all they did was take the petrol fuel they bought in garage and heat it up to F350 degrees in distillation system ( very dangerous overheat petrol and you got big fire but they knew what they were doing ) and then took this cleaner fuel and put it back in their test cars .The new fuel gave them much better MPG than the old fuel .

note at the end you tube " refine your own fuel " he has bottle of fuel with clear fuel no colur thats the good stuff that gives the MPG Not the red and the heavy gunky stuff left over about ~10% of the fuel in your petrol is the stuff that burns up in your CAT of the car and not in the engine and is the bad crud in the petrol ( and that is with USA fuel a much better quality than the Irish petrol crud the cork refinery gives us often often with very high levels than ~5% of Ethanol they say it has ).The more ethanol they can stuff in the fuel means the more waste fuel they can stuff in it and MPG can be reduced a lot and your getting ripped off stupid

Others chose to buy what is called clean petrol ~€20 a gallon(bout € 4.50 a liter ) sold in the UK for lawnmowers so you garden doesn't stink so bad from the bad petrol the cars use .This clean petrol also gave much better MPG and wont have this gunk in the petrol and the engine will car will run cleaner .However at ~4.50 a liter it isn't a option for us .If the oil companies were forced to sell clean fuel it would drop in price to the same as normal fuel but until the oil companies have to sell clean fuel they will sell dirty fuel with as much waste oil as they can stuff into the petrol, to rip your faces and cause you to get maybe as much as 20% reduction in MPG


Then the other present rip off with price fixxing is the icing on top
The price of crude oil in the rest of the world last year remained below $90 a barrel (~200 liters average ) but in Europe with price fixing they kept the price of the barrel of oil higher at about $110 a barrel some ~15% higher than the rest of the world .With that price fixing they were able to keep the price of petrol ~15% higher than it should have been through 2012 and 2013even though oil has been dropping a lot all round the planet we got ripped
Because this 2012 and 2013 price fixing was so in your face clear as day to even non fuel experts some fuel experts got a EU anti racketing action going to put some of the oil companies in the dock.
BP and the rest will get some fine about ~1% of the amount of the profit they stole from us. Ok it will be bog number some few billions fine but they will pay it laugh all the way to the bank having still made the other 99% profit they stole from us stay in their pockets .

However as more fuel experts work out the scams and the biggest scam of all we are running out of oil the evidence say bull crap
if we look the price of a USA gallon of fuel from 1919 when they first made the car and compare it today and we factor in the inflation it works out that in 1919 petrol at 5 cents a gallon relative to inflation was more like $3.50 a gallon in today's terms and if we look the modern fuel in the USA minus tax its about $2.50 a gallon .Fuel is reality dropped in price relative inflation figures to incomes all through the 1930s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 2000 2010 era.Yes there were spikes every ten years some wars etc but the average price of fuel has been down
However Europe's governments have been adding tax onto this so fuel for Europe never went down as much as the USA did so often fuel prices in the USA are half the price of Europe .However the Obama lot started to put more tax on USA fuel so its getting expensive in the USA but still about 50% the Irish prices
QED if oil was running out and getting scarce the prices would have risen .In realty most of the world that hasn't got tax on fuels the prices have over the last 100 years gone down .That clearly means there is more oil than demand .If you look the oil find every year they always on average find more oil than we use .If you look many experts who are not part of the oil business to rip our faces they say there is enough oil to last thousand year s even if every china man and Indian bought a car the planet is swimming in oil.The oil companies cat make so good a profit if there is too much oil so they deliberately don't drill places where they know there tons of oil and keep prices higher with the mantra oil is running out .
The reality and evidence is against this logic and the price of oil still goes down on average

You can easily figure out we in Ireland are getting crappy petrol if you look USA sites like hyper mileing where guys measure their fuel and MPG.The USA petrol is much better quality so even though the USA gallon is ~20% less than the Irish gallon eg ~4 liters for the USA gallon versus 4.55 for the Irish gallon the same cars in Ireland will often have worse MPG than the USA guys get and their gallons are smaller than us
Not convinced get a 1/2 cup full of Irish petrol (100cc) throw it onto some concrete road way as set fire to it .The fire will be a deep orange yellow colour with thick black smoke that stinks awful and full of toxic chemical When the fire is gone out there will be black stain of sooty crap and that is the stuff that doesn't burn making your engine burn baddly and lowering your MPG

Now if you buy a small 100cc can of the Colemans petrol fuel (clean petrol) the clear stuff you use for Zippo lighters and pour it onto the same roadway and set fire to it. That will burn hot with nearly invisible flame and no smoke .When the fire is finished after a few seconds there will be nearly no stains left behind often no stain at all

So every which way the oil companies rob you stupid and the governments let them as they get big tax from fuel and they don't care its not their money getting robbed it your wallet that is robbed
Now if your buther always sold you 50% fat with every cut of the meat and charged the same price as the meat with no fat you could see the scam
But with petrol its hard to see the scam but its easy to figure it nowadays with the internet and hyper milers who can tell you bad fuel from good and the Irish experts will tell you irishg petrol is some of the worst crud in all of of Europe and it shows up in crap MPG for Irish cars compared to USA or German french cars where their fuel tends to be better fuels
Some vintage car groups from the UK will ensure not to fill up in Ireland even though its cheaper than the UK as Irish petrol, made a dogs dinner of their vintage cars



Now to give you some idea what this TOXIC waste oil does to your health compared cleaner fuels get a mouse and a bug and small bunny rabbit and put them in air tight container Then splill onto the floor of the cage of the animals about 100cc of Irish fuel and seal the box up only letting enough air in every now and again to let the animals have oxygen .Within a few days probably a lot less the cute little mouse and bunny rabbit will be dead from that very toxic fuel. The ugly fuggly bug might survive but if you look its offspring that are born often they are deformed and often dead on birth . In the cold morning in winter you go out to your car turn on the engine let the engine heat up and bring the kids out .The CAT isn't hot so all the toxic fuel that isn't burnt will come out onto the street and the kids and you will inhale the same junk as the cute bunny rabbit got .Not enough to kill you there and then but over time the toxic chemicals will injure your health, 5 minutes of that toxic oil fumes crud is worse than 20 ciggerates and yet they want to ban smoking in the private car .
So not only are they ripping your face but they know they are speeding up your deaths with weird cancers from toxic oil waste products that we never used to get in Ireland
Ask mechanics over many years they always tended to get cancer of the skin on the TESTICLES from toxic oil remains that stayed on their hands and they scratched their testicles after work was finished (sometimes during work if it was quite day ). The new Petrol fuel formulas since the 1980s and ordinary irish people mostly city dwellers bathing in car fumes suddenly all started to get similar weird skin cancers all over bodies or in the lungs even though many were non smokers .ask the teachers in schools they will tell you all the kids these days are hacking coughing and got chesty problems all year around when in the old days it was never so bad
FACE FACTS irish petrol fuel fumes fuels are killing the Irish RACE and their kids off and we are paying to kill yourself with spiked Irish petrol,fuels

Don't believe me go sniff a motor bikes fuel fumes as it comes out the exhaust as they have no CATS to burn the nasty stuff and you will smell something very nasty and probably start to sneeze immediately . Then get a white cloth put it over the exhaust for a few minutes and it will get black spot .Then try again to smell that back spot and the smell from that black soot it will knock you

Here is video of fuel system that heats petrol fuels to get better MPG using USA petrol tends to work but cruddy Irish fuel probably wont be worth the trouble

Any good shop that sells 2 stroke engines such as outboard engines or scooters or similar will tell you in Ireland to ensure there is enough oil to lubricate the engines you need to use twice as much lubrication oil as the recommended amount in the rest of the world .That is because Irish petrol is so bad it doesn't lubricate so well ass UK German Jap or USA petrol fuels will do .Petrol fuels have some lubrication qualities when they are good petrol fuels .So for two stoke engine often ~2% oil (50:1 ratio) added to the petrol fuels will give enough extra lubrication to keep the 2 stroke engines lubricated .However many two stroke engines that work well in other countries petrol fuel with ~2% lubrication oil will need ~4% (25:1 ratio ) lubrication oil to run properly in Ireland .That is because the low quality petrol fuel of Ireland with more waste oil stuffed in it in it will not lubricate so well and you need more 2 stroke lubrication oil to solve that problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tpGmH66Kkw

Derry

HandsomeDan

The whiff of jimcorr.com off of this thread...

Damien360

HandsomeDan wrote: »

The whiff of jimcorr.com off of this thread...

Ha Ha ...Brilliant

NuckingFacker

HandsomeDan wrote: »

The whiff of jimcorr.com off of this thread...

Damien360 wrote: »

Ha Ha ...Brilliant

Made sense to me anyway. The level of engine failure in 2 stroke appliances in Ireland has rocketed in the last decade. They die for sport - if you use a lot of them for work, you will know this. Never used to be the case. We do work here and in the UK, in the UK, the generators we use , which struggle to produce enough juice here in Ireland run much better and produce much more power. The only diference over there is the fuel used is UK fuel. I'd imagine the above post has more sense in it than many would give it credit for.

helimachoptor

A friend of mine specialises in trading oil, he doesn't drive as he says petrol is too expensive!

kupus

Bah nothing changes anyway

galwaytt

derry wrote: »

Any good shop that sells 2 stroke engines such as outboard engines or scooters or similar will tell you in Ireland to ensure there is enough oil to lubricate the engines you need to use twice as much lubrication oil as the recommended amount in the rest of the world .That is because Irish petrol is so bad it doesn't lubricate so well ass UK German Jap or USA petrol fuels will do .Petrol fuels have some lubrication qualities when they are good petrol fuels .So for two stoke engine often ~2% oil (50:1 ratio) added to the petrol fuels will give enough extra lubrication to keep the 2 stroke engines lubricated .However many two stroke engines that work well in other countries petrol fuel with ~2% lubrication oil will need ~4% (25:1 ratio ) lubrication oil to run properly in Ireland .That is because the low quality petrol fuel of Ireland with more waste oil stuffed in it in it will not lubricate so well and you need more 2 stroke lubrication oil to solve that problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tpGmH66Kkw

Derry

....you were doing well right up to that paragraph, I'll grant you that.

But the 2-stroke info isn't accurate. Adding extra 2-stroke oil to such an engine actually PROMOTES seizure as you're weakening the petrol mix, and so it runs lean. Maybe it works on static, single-speed carbs(strimmers, etc), but not on road vehicles.

Consider, you have a 125cc engine. On each intake stroke it pulls in a certain (fixed amount) of petrol and oil via the carb and a volume of air - call it the 'intake gas'. The ratios of oil, petrol and air, are fixed, and your plug, timing and exhaust port timing are designed to work for that (stoichiometric) ratio.

Now, of those three things, the volume of air can't be adjusted, but the volumes of petrol and oil, can. If you increase the volume of oil, you decrease the volume of petrol pro-rata - ergo, for a given volume of 'intake gas' you use more oil, but critically, less petrol. As anyone who knows engines will tell you, this is a run 'weak' condition, and in 2-strokes leads to higher combustion temperatures, and tends towards heat seizures and piston crown melting.

People do this with strimmers etc all the time, and they gunk up the whole thing and eventually kill them.

It is better that the correct ratio be used, and carbs/timing etc be optimised for them. Sometimes it really does pay to do what it says on the tin (sic)

derry

galwaytt wrote: »

....you were doing well right up to that paragraph, I'll grant you that.

But the 2-stroke info isn't accurate. Adding extra 2-stroke oil to such an engine actually PROMOTES seizure as you're weakening the petrol mix, and so it runs lean. Maybe it works on static, single-speed carbs(strimmers, etc), but not on road vehicles.

Consider, you have a 125cc engine. On each intake stroke it pulls in a certain (fixed amount) of petrol and oil via the carb and a volume of air - call it the 'intake gas'. The ratios of oil, petrol and air, are fixed, and your plug, timing and exhaust port timing are designed to work for that (stoichiometric) ratio.

Now, of those three things, the volume of air can't be adjusted, but the volumes of petrol and oil, can. If you increase the volume of oil, you decrease the volume of petrol pro-rata - ergo, for a given volume of 'intake gas' you use more oil, but critically, less petrol. As anyone who knows engines will tell you, this is a run 'weak' condition, and in 2-strokes leads to higher combustion temperatures, and tends towards heat seizures and piston crown melting.

People do this with strimmers etc all the time, and they gunk up the whole thing and eventually kill them.

It is better that the correct ratio be used, and carbs/timing etc be optimised for them. Sometimes it really does pay to do what it says on the tin (sic)

I suppose I should have said with caveat that when you do increase the oil content its good to increase the fuel ratio as well. when I would buy and bring my 2 stroke Outboards to the local 2 stroke marine Mechanic he would always tell me when i colected the engine to double the oil content because the Irish petrol fuel was so crap
I presume with the service he had adjusted the fuel ratios to suit that mix whenever the engines went into be serviced. He had been service agent for these engine before I was born and i am 50 plus so always did what he said and never had any problems like my friends did trying vainly to use low oil ratios in Ireland

Over time with using many other types of 2 strokes I leaned the real issue is low quality petrol has less lubricating abilities and the oil ratio is chosen for normal petrol not bad petrol. In reality if your looking for best result do as some do that I know they import to Ireland high quality petrol fuels at more than €5 a liter with HAZMAT rates to solve the problem completely.
Professionals who use strimmers full time found the best fuels was the way to go

Also the oil ratio will effect the timing needs to be advanced or retarded to suit the oil ratios you intend to use .Smaller engines are often more impacted than larger engines


I didn't want to include all 2 stroke as well in the post as that is getting very technical

All the Irish need to know is Irish petrol is **** stuff sorta like eating bread with saw dust in it and probably explains why so many kids have asthma
problems as it is full of nasty waste oil products that get past the cat for the first ten minutes the car engine is running

Derry

dr.fuzzenstein

derry wrote: »

I suppose I should have said with caveat that when you do increase the oil content its good to increase the fuel ratio as well. when I would buy and bring my 2 stroke Outboards to the local 2 stroke marine Mechanic he would always tell me when i colected the engine to double the oil content because the Irish petrol fuel was so crap
I presume with the service he had adjusted the fuel ratios to suit that mix whenever the engines went into be serviced. He had been service agent for these engine before I was born and i am 50 plus so always did what he said and never had any problems like my friends did trying vainly to use low oil ratios in Ireland

Over time with using many other types of 2 strokes I leaned the real issue is low quality petrol has less lubricating abilities and the oil ratio is chosen for normal petrol not bad petrol. In reality if your looking for best result do as some do that I know they import to Ireland high quality petrol fuels at more than €5 a liter with HAZMAT rates to solve the problem completely.
Professionals who use strimmers full time found the best fuels was the way to go

Also the oil ratio will effect the timing needs to be advanced or retarded to suit the oil ratios you intend to use .Smaller engines are often more impacted than larger engines


I didn't want to include all 2 stroke as well in the post as that is getting very technical

All the Irish need to know is Irish petrol is **** stuff sorta like eating bread with saw dust in it and probably explains why so many kids have asthma
problems as it is full of nasty waste oil products that get past the cat for the first ten minutes the car engine is running

Derry

Say wha?:eek:

HandsomeDan