United offering 10c/L off petrol in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane

They will make a killing and u wont be able to get near them, free adds I would say, but a least it brings it to the media. Where I live (2 hours from Brisbane) it went from $1.36 to $140 (diesel) but what sh'ts me is that oil went (in two days) from $75 s barrel to around $70. The oil companys would not had time to produce 1 percent of the fuel they well sell at this top price. My bobs worth
Bruce

That is the sort of profiteering the RACQ, NRMA and others are complaining about.

But Howard and Costello have told us 'don't you worry about that."

'Don't you worry about that'? Hey, Joh Bjelke Peterson lives on in Canberra!

"...it went from $1.36 to $140 (diesel)..."

I hope that's a typo....10294% in a day?

The Adelaide Servos are Adelaide Airport and Salisbury Highway (I think they said 1 -3 Salisbury Highway, don't know which end that is - I guess Northern end, cost too much to go up there & find out). Price is just under $1-30c/litre. No mention made about diesel.

The servos in Brisbane are at Springfield and Park Ridge.

Hi Trevor, I think our biggests problem with the oil prices is our old mate Mr Bush. How long has he left to gov in the old USA, too long probably ha ha. Anyway will have to find away to make more money to pay for it. Trevor can u give me the State Forest nos for Kenilworth permits please .
Cheers Bruce

Bruce,

Politics, not one of my strong points so I leave that subject to more learned friends. Spoken as diplomatically as the subject in concern hahaha.

QPWS-----PO Box 52 Kenilworth QLD 4574
PH 07 5446 0925....FAX 07 5446 0966

Just looking at the permit now reminds me I need another one as well, thank you.

Trevor.

Recently Caltex posted the price break-up of fuel. I recall the government Excise tax being 38% and on top of that was the GST of 10%.

So government taxes are inflate the price substantially.

But the federal government is awash with tax money. Go figure!

Shell publish average daily prices and margins, along as 28 day average prices and margins on their website for each state.

Recently the 28 day average margin has been around the 3-4c/L mark - it's up to 7.4c/L this evening as an average for the past 4 weeks. Which indicates that they received a higher profit than normal - funnily enough for the period with Easter and Anzac Day, which meant for many people two four-day weekends in a row.

Even worse is when the daily margin jumps to over 15c/L - which means that prices are artificially 10c/L higher than they could be, because of the "discounting cycle"!

Everyone should make a conscious effort to only buy petrol on the last day of the discounting cycle - if we can drive up demand on low price days, maybe the oil companies will be less inclined to jump prices up 10-14c/L at a time each week, then slowly whittle them down. Name another grocery or consumer commodity that has this sort of weekly price fluctuation cycle. You don't see milk have a discounting cycle!

Scubaroo,

I quote you..."You don't see milk have a discounting cycle!"

I agree....BUTTT milk is dearer/lt than petrol and in my uninformed opinion would be cheaper to get to the consumer. So do we work around what things cost in life or sit back and avoid buying things that essentially make our lives easier and more enjoyable.
Deal with the deck we are handed, no sense banging your head up against a brick wall...It will never move for you.

Regards Trevor.

Scubaroo,

You said that it is "Even worse is when the daily margin jumps to over 15c/L - which means that prices are artificially 10c/L higher than they could be, because of the "discounting cycle"! "

That would be fair to say if the oil companies were able to absorb all the costs for storage and distribution, wholesaling and retailing - which the margin has to cover before any profit is available.

What appears to be the real case is that at the lower end of the discount cycle the companies are trying to maintain market share at minimum cost to the bottom line.

I agree that prices are becoming difficult if not impossible but we will probably need to adapt to the current situation.

Marty

I think it's still a fair thing to say - if they're averaging 5c/L margin over 28 days, one would have to assume that that is a profitable margin for the company. When the margin strikes 15c/L - there's 10c/L extra being charged. Obviously the margin drops BELOW 5c/L for part of the week in order for 5c/L to be the average... but why bother, and why not just charge 5c/L markup ALL of the time? When people need petrol they buy petrol - most service stations are usually charging exactly the same price anyway, so why does there need to be a discounting cycle???

Trevor,

We have a United just down the road. Best thing that ever happened as far as fuel prices go. They consistently keep the Shell (100 metres away) servo honest. When Shell were the only servo, he used to be a total ripoff. Now they are both amongst the cheapest (not THE cheapest) I've seen in the NSW listings on EO for a long period of time

Regards

Al,

That is true, they do get the major's that are close to them to sharpen the pencil a bit but this is always offset by another servo of theirs with less competition. Someone somewhere is paying for your cheaper petrol. I am sure you are not complaining though and neither would I, I just wouldn't fill up at the United that is keeping them cheap.

Cheers
Trevor.