Petrol Price and Taxes: Graph Of The Day
As the “rumble of hauliers’ discontent gets louder with warning of strikes ” I thought I’d take a quick look at what makes petrol so expensive:
When we pay for petrol and other oil products, we look at the price and then blame the garage for making it so expensive. But where does the money we pay for this actually go? How is it actually divided? We only pay our money at the pump, but they’re certainly not the only ones who get money from our purchase.
The graph below, courtesy of OPEC , shows who gets what from each sale of a litre of oil:
When you look at it, one very obvious fact jumps out at you: most of the cost for us in the UK is pure tax!
When the price of oil is high, the government takes more money away from us. The government are the only ones who could very easily cut our costs - by cutting tax. High taxes on fuel are just making the credit crunch even harder to bear. If we can’t afford to travel, the entire economy suffers.
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But the government have left themselves in a mess by bankrupting the country and having to borrow to stay afloat, making tax revenues essential and all but eliminating the chance of tax cuts.
Idiots.
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Yes but the most striking thing about that chart is the fact the industry margin is the greatest in the UK - if our industry were only as greedy as the Italians then we could lop about 10p off a litre.
Governments and Oil Companies (and the owners of the oil reserves) make money whether the price of oil is $50 or $150 or….
If people don’t get the idea that the current path is unsustainable in the long term now, then there is little hope.
We will all have carts and donkeys within 50 years.