Irish oil demand down 25% in last three years, dropping faster than Greece's

[gijoe]

It really makes cents, spelling intended, to drive a truck a couple of hundred miles to fill cheaply.....

False economy....

Hardly. Most of them are passing through Belgium or Luxembourg where they can the rebates anyway.

[gerhard dengler]

Hauliers get excise duty rebates in Belgium and Luxembourg that they do not get here so they are filling up to the brim on the continent.

The IRHA have called for the introduction of such a rebate scheme here

Rising fuel prices driving hauliers

The Irish Road Haulage Association, in a pre-budget submission to the Minister for Finance, showed the way forward to increase the tax yield from hauliers’ fuel by doing away with the so-called "green diesel" and introducing a rebate to legitimate tax-compliant hauliers. The scheme we sought is similar to that existing for the fishing industry who are rebated on both fuel and carbon taxes. The submission showed that by reducing the cost of diesel fuel to licensed hauliers those hauliers would buy their fuel in Ireland rather than on the continent where fuel is up to 20 cents per litre cheaper and Irish hauliers are availing of rebates from those governments

Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion...#ixzz1lkY1802T

[bob3367]

Hardly. Most of them are passing through Belgium or Luxembourg where they can the rebates anyway.

How do they "can the rebates"?

[valamhic]

Fuel sales at petrol stations are down 25% on 2005 levels according to the CSO. And 2005 would not even be the peak.

The oils used to fuel rotorary engines such as, ships and steam condensing power plants is Heavy fuel oil, that used for lorries, light boats, compression ignition cars etc is diesel oil and then there is kerosene for aircraft and petrol. These represent only part of a barrel of crude oil. The ecomomic down turn results in a lowering in consumption in all derivitives from crude. However if we every manage reduce the engine fuels while demand for the remaining parts stays the same it will create problem. In order to obtain supplies of other oil products necessary for a host of industrial, agricultural and civil engineering applications, oil companies need to be able to sell the distillate oils also. A small indication of this effect is that diesel is now on a par in price with petrol. This is because companies need to sell petrol as well as diesel. They can convert some petrol to diesel but not it all. The market effect will be that people will go back to petrol cars thereby redressing the balance.

This needs to be coinsidered when we talk about reducing oil imports. We will still needgthe residual non fuel oil products.

[sondagefaux]

Hauliers get excise duty rebates in Belgium and Luxembourg that they do not get here so they are filling up to the brim on the continent.

The minority that go to the continent.

Out of 10,294 million Tonne-Kilometres in Ireland in 2010, only 2,728 T-Ks were 'Import/Export Work' which includes 'work done to and from ports as well as roll-on/roll-off and cross-border work'.

Only 7,505 thousand tonnes of goods were carried on international journeys by road freight in 2010, compared to 118,360 thousand tonnes carried on national journeys in 2010:

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/rel...dfreight10.pdf (Table 8, p. 23).

Of the 9,321 million Tonne-Kilometers of Road Freight Activity originating within Ireland in 2010, 8,198 million was on internal (Ireland to Ireland) journeys.

There were 569 million T-Ks on Ireland to UK journeys, out of a total of 1,124 million T-Ks on Ireland to foreign countries.

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/rel...dfreight10.pdf (Table 18, p.30)

In other words, most Irish-originating freight journeys never leave the country, and of those that do more than half go no farther than NI or Britain.

[riven]

The general fall across OECD countries is in the 8-10% range. Ireland and Greece are outliers including 30% in our case.

Well from what I see there in th US oil demand is down about 8% from 2006-2010 but automotive fuels are down approx 15%. I am guessing that this is due to the increases in US refinery production v transport tightening. In any case considering the differneces in economies, 8 and 20% are pretty similar (US inefficient; Ireland efficient). For the rest of the OECD, i do not know.

[riven]

The oils used to fuel rotorary engines such as, ships and steam condensing power plants is Heavy fuel oil, that used for lorries, light boats, compression ignition cars etc is diesel oil and then there is kerosene for aircraft and petrol. These represent only part of a barrel of crude oil. The ecomomic down turn results in a lowering in consumption in all derivitives from crude. However if we every manage reduce the engine fuels while demand for the remaining parts stays the same it will create problem. In order to obtain supplies of other oil products necessary for a host of industrial, agricultural and civil engineering applications, oil companies need to be able to sell the distillate oils also. A small indication of this effect is that diesel is now on a par in price with petrol. This is because companies need to sell petrol as well as diesel. They can convert some petrol to diesel but not it all. The market effect will be that people will go back to petrol cars thereby redressing the balance.

This needs to be coinsidered when we talk about reducing oil imports. We will still needgthe residual non fuel oil products.

Actually my thoughts on diesel prices increasing in Ireland were that the Whitegate refinery stopped prducing diesel due to the increased sulphur rules and the ability to make higher value products.

[realist]

There has also been a huge increase in people using their fireplaces instead of their oil central heating. Nearly every shop one goes into now sells wood kindling, firepacks and briquettes. I was looking for the local free newspaper in my local shop and was told that they are gone almost as soon as they are delivered as people are using them as fire starters. He also said customers have told him they are now burning as much as they can in their fireplaces rather than filling their bins to avoid higher rubbish collection charges.

[cimon9999]

Greece would nearly be able to go it alone, if it weren't for that pesky oil:

[gijoe]

Actually my thoughts on diesel prices increasing in Ireland were that the Whitegate refinery stopped prducing diesel due to the increased sulphur rules and the ability to make higher value products.

Whitegate is geared to refining Libyan oil which is low in sulphur. The problem with Ireland and Europe's move towards diesel and away from petrol for environmental reasons is that distillates only make up 22-26% of the average barrel of oil. This is putting fierce pressure on diesel prices.