The Wardman Wire

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.