What justification for fuel prices?

I had a small stroke in 2007 and although I recovered fully, I found my eyesight was perhaps not all it should be. For that reason I chose to sell my car and give up driving. At that time I would have paid about £1 a litre for unleaded petrol, although my car ran on diesel and, for that reason, it cost me about £1.05 a litre to run the old gas guzzler.

Today I find the cost of running a car depends on where you live. Unleaded seems to range from £1.28.4 to £1.42.9, whilst diesel can fluctuate between 133.01p and 146.9p. By any stretch of the imagination these differences do not simply reflect the extra costs of transporting it into rural and ‘hard to reach’ areas.

An average price increase in fuel of 35% in just over two years is preposterous by any stretch of the imagination and cannot be justified. Equally, prices today seem to differ by close to 10% depending on where you live. The only conclusion it seems reasonable to make is that someone, somewhere is making a great deal of money out of the average motorist.

Of course, it goes without saying we should be looking for greater use of public transport and, in this respect, there is a desperate need to improve our services, particularly to rural locations. But, I don’t know about readers of this blog, but it sticks in my throat that corporations are making money hand over fist out of our need for fuel.

I suppose you could argue it gives greater credence to the idea of developing hybrid and electric cars – good point, but we aren’t there yet. So, we have to live in the world today. And that world is full of extortion and subterfuge so that huge companies, like BP can make vast profits each year.

I would remind the directors of BP that the Deepwater crisis was not the fault of the average British driver, and we should not be expected to foot the bill. Similarly, to all the other oil companies I would argue it is your choice to streamline oilfield operation and create new fields in Brazil, Kazakhstan, Iran, Canada and India. Now these companies are intent on destroying the natural beauty of Greenland’s Arctic area.

The sooner we break away from our reliance on oil, the sooner these companies will learn they cannot abuse British driver. Unfortunately, my cynicism forces me to conclude that as the likes of BP slide away, so will new conglomerates selling ‘cheap’ solar or wind power.

With this in mind you can see the justification for mass nationalisation of the energy industry.