The UK, no, you personally yes. You have put yourself in a position where you are reliant on fuel. I live near shops, use the train for work and have no need for a car. I am not reliant on fuel because I have positioned myself in that way, so I still believe it is a luxury as you have alternatives.

 

Good point well made. With a bit of effort, I could probably be in the same position. To be fair, I use the car to get to work and back and go up to see the kids once a fortnight and thats about it.

At the end of the day I guess it comes down to having a viable infrastructure to make the change.

 

Good grief man! Billions of £'s profit & it's not linked to fuel prices ... you must be I'll remember that when I'm filling up 3 times a week at £50 a shot.

TX.

 

Remind us where we can find the better priced fuel ...

TX.

 

When wells reach their "peak" there is potentially upto 35% still in the ground, problem is it becomes uneconomic to recover. Also, the western hemisphere, and in particular Canada, has more oil reserves than any conbination of OPEC countries put together. Problem is it's heavy crude, much harder to pump and refine therefore uneconomic to recover currently.

 

You travel on trains that don't require fuel The goods get to your supermarket without the need for fuel The manmade clothes and shoes that you wear are dependent on oil, as is delivery of non manmade clothes. We are all dependent on the price of fuel, you just don't see the direct cost.

 

To be fair, Scotty did say that the country as a whole is dpeendant on fule, but he, personally was not dependant on fuel from the forecourt.

 

That's not what I said at all, try reading the post

All I said is that they are not making a huge profit compared to other companies in percentage terms.

As for making hay while the sun shines, maybe they are, but what company doesn't? Hell, I work in the banking industry and we've been doing it for years! It's how we will survive the current crisis because we have shored ourselves up for it. It's standard practice across all sorts of business.

Any business that does not take advantage of an oppurtunity won't last long.

I still fail to see why you think that Shell & BP are at fault and not our govt and OPEC.

Fuel is a high volume, low margin business. The bulk of their profits is made in other parts of the business. They dont have much room for maneouvre. I do agree however, that the way price cuts are handled in lieu of oil price drops aren't very good, but if you go to Tesco, does the price of bread vary wildly with the cost of it's constituent parts? Definitely not.

Geezer

 

Yeah I noticed how HBOS, RBS et al were prudent and sensible during the Boom years and shored themselves up. I mean it's not as if they went cap in hand to shareholders for £16billion between them is it - Let alone having to have the BoE pump £50billion into the system

God know what Mervyn King was on about today when he criticised the banks for not making any provision for leaner times at all

 

Believe me Pete, if we hadn't made provision for this, we wouldn't be asking for £4billion, we would be in receivership. And alot of the money we have made is tied up in investments, this is simply cold hard cash to underpin the credit business we need to do.

Geezer

 

Not true. His exact words were "I live near shops, use the train for work and have no need for a car. I am not reliant on fuel ...". No mention of forecourts. HTH I am pointing out that unless you are completely self-sufficient (food, clothes, transport) then you are affected by fuel prices.

 

The conversation was based around petrol prices at the forecourts.

Of course we are affected by the cost of fuel - But you can certainly limit your exposure to it - Which is what Scotty was alluding to.