Heating Oil Price Rocketing

[LaurasOtherHalf]

Bill said:

Mr Spoon said:

You may want to consider my other posts that the rubbish about fuel being cheaper in the summer is exactly that, rubbish,

Do you mean trade price? Retail fluctuates with a peak building to Christmas and a low in the summer IME.

Don’t argue with Mr Spoon, you’ll get a sneering response and he won’t ever sell you oil again.

[Bill]

[The_Doc]

Heating Prices Cheaper in Summer then Winter ? An analysis.

Retail (Customer) Prices from the Office of National Statistics

https://thumbsnap.com/sZhs2r6F


Years grouped together. 2012 on the left, 2021 on the right.
Red bar is most expensive month, green bar is cheapest month
Chart took me about 10 mins to put together

Number of years when the most expensive month is December, January or February = 7 out of 10 years

Conclusion: 70% of the time in that last 10 years, Dec/Jan or Feb was the most expensive month to buy fuel.

but.....

Cheapest month to buy fuel:
January 20% of the time
December 20%
July 20%
November 10% of the time
June 10%
etc
etc

There are lies, damned lies and there are statistics.

Yours, a scientist

what's quite bizarre is that my father worked for Shell for 15 years selling oil contracts, but he retired in 1995

Edited by The_Doc on Monday 7th March 09:37

[Deep Thought]

The_Doc said:

Heating Prices Cheaper in Summer then Winter ? An analysis.

Retail (Customer) Prices from the Office of National Statistics

https://thumbsnap.com/sZhs2r6F


Years grouped together. 2012 on the left, 2021 on the right.
Red bar is most expensive month, green bar is cheapest month
Chart took me about 10 mins to put together

Number of years when the most expensive month is December, January or February = 7 out of 10 years

Conclusion: 70% of the time in that last 10 years, Dec/Jan or Feb was the most expensive month to buy fuel.

but.....

Cheapest month to buy fuel:
January 20% of the time
December 20%
July 20%
November 10% of the time
June 10%
etc
etc

There are lies, damned lies and there are statistics.

Yours, a scientist

what's quite bizarre is that my father worked for Shell for 15 years selling oil contracts, but he retired in 1995

Edited by The_Doc on Monday 7th March 09:37

I'd a look at the same data and basically posed the question of the data - "if i had a really big tank and was to fill it for the year in a summer month, compared to January of the following winter, would it be cheaper?"

I chose August as "The summer month".

7 Augusts out of the 11 years worth of data i had, the answer was "Yes it would have been cheaper to do that".

Second question - "if i had done that and bought a years worth every august, how much would i have saved, compared to buying a years worth every January?"

So buying your fuel in Augest each year for the year rather than buying in the following winter (january) for the year, and buying 2,000 litres at a time (i think the original basis was - "buy a really big tank and buy a years worth")

Then

August £10,806.50
Jan £11,399.42

So a saving of £592.92 over 11 years.

It would be worse than that as the real scenario would be people would buy as and when needed so they'd not be buying all their fuel at the Jan price every year.

[PushedDover]

Square Leg said:

PushedDover said:

I have you se NRG usually
They offered for £99 iirc a smarter solution via 4g





Other functionality etc etc

Interested in this - is it an app?

Hi - sorry for the delay : https://yournrg.co.uk/services/remote-tank-monitor... thats who / how I got it fitted to mine.
(holiday cottage, so works well)

[KTMsm]

I have capacity for 2yrs when I get 1000 litres of space I start watching weekly prices

It's worked well for 7 years

I topped up as I needed to in Jan and was waiting for the price to come down - due to panic buying currently that decision has cost me an additional 70p / L but I'm just buying 500L and hoping it will drop

Maybe I'm right maybe I'm not - in the grand scheme it doesn't really matter but I like a good deal if available

I called Rix - I've used them in the past, they are possibly Mr Spoon's Co. - "You're not a regular customer so we won't quote"

That's fine there are plenty that will and I simply wont use them in the future - it works both ways

[The_Doc]

Deep Thought said:

I'd a look at the same data and basically posed the question of the data - "if i had a really big tank and was to fill it for the year in a summer month, compared to January of the following winter, would it be cheaper?"

I chose August as "The summer month".

7 Augusts out of the 11 years worth of data i had, the answer was "Yes it would have been cheaper to do that".

Second question - "if i had done that and bought a years worth every august, how much would i have saved, compared to buying a years worth every January?"

So buying your fuel in Augest each year for the year rather than buying in the following winter (january) for the year, and buying 2,000 litres at a time (i think the original basis was - "buy a really big tank and buy a years worth")

Then

August £10,806.50
Jan £11,399.42

So a saving of £592.92 over 11 years.

It would be worse than that as the real scenario would be people would buy as and when needed so they'd not be buying all their fuel at the Jan price every year.

DeepThought, I like the cut of your jib. You and me could certainly enjoy a pint over an excel sheet !
Let's hope this doens't incur the wrath of the Utensil.


-keeping it light- smiles everywhere people - pity the Ukranians right now, not us fussing over fuel bills..

[Deep Thought]

The_Doc said:

DeepThought, I like the cut of your jib. You and me could certainly enjoy a pint over an excel sheet !
Let's hope this doens't incur the wrath of the Utensil.

Indeed

The_Doc said:

-keeping it light- smiles everywhere people - pity the Ukranians right now, not us fussing over fuel bills..

Indeed. Things could be an awful awful lot worse. So many horrible scenes and pictures coming through.

So sad.

[NDA]

Deep Thought said:

Indeed. Things could be an awful awful lot worse. So many horrible scenes and pictures coming through.

So sad.

Yes quite. I heard a chap on the radio this morning speaking from Ukraine asking the west to 'hunker down and bite the bullet' in terms of putting up with these higher prices in an effort to isolate Russia. Freedom has a price.

[Square Leg]

PushedDover said:

Hi - sorry for the delay : https://yournrg.co.uk/services/remote-tank-monitor... thats who / how I got it fitted to mine.
(holiday cottage, so works well)

Thanks.

[KTMsm]

NDA said:

I heard a chap on the radio this morning speaking from Ukraine asking the west to 'hunker down and bite the bullet' in terms of putting up with these higher prices in an effort to isolate Russia. Freedom has a price.

But we are currently still importing oil and gas from Russia

These price rises are due to panic buying

[Square Leg]

I don’t quite get the panic buying bit?
Who is doing it?

Consumers only have a finite amount of storage and most companies won’t deliver less than 500lts.
I know many people who have regularly only ordered 500 at a time even in ‘normal’ times, as they just want to keep topped up.
I’ve almost always had 1000 each fill but my tank is 1200 - I don’t think I’ve ever needed an absolute fill.

[Deep Thought]

Square Leg said:

I don’t quite get the panic buying bit?
Who is doing it?

Consumers only have a finite amount of storage and most companies won’t deliver less than 500lts.
I know many people who have regularly only ordered 500 at a time even in ‘normal’ times, as they just want to keep topped up.
I’ve almost always had 1000 each fill but my tank is 1200 - I don’t think I’ve ever needed an absolute fill.

I presume that normally people would run a tank down to maybe 20% then order 500 or 900 litres. With prices rising daily there seems to be a mindset now - rightly or wrongly - of "i must get fuel now because its going up in price daily", so anyone with a tank at 50% is buying and probably an element of people with 70% are buying (either 300 litres or filling their tank right up).

It doesnt take much strain on the system for supply and delivery issues - like we saw with petrol - when a load of people order when they dont really need it.

Not helped of course by talk of "shortages" / no supply and oil suppliers restricting amounts to 500 litres. So if people hit that turbulence when ordering then they will order again as soon as they can for fear of price increases / running out.

[Nimby]

LooneyTunes said:

Nimby said:

LooneyTunes said:

I’ve always been surprised how basic the watchman display is. Really wouldn’t be that difficult to make the processing/display more advanced. Even active alerting would be pretty straightforward. Have always assumed that nobody can be bothered to upgrade these systems once fitted and that there may not be a market for some more advanced.

Btw, for anyone with one of these, I assume it’s common knowledge that the “battery tube” just contains some standard AAs which can be changed with relatively little effort?

My transmitter takes a Li-ion CR2430 button cell and the receiver display is fine Maybe you have a really old version.

The display is fine, just basic (number only), but yes it’s quite an old unit. Not much to go wrong with them really, just doesn’t offer much beyond a basic level reading (which it seems from a subsequent post another one does).

I think we're talking about completely different products. Mine has a 10-line bar graph. The sender uses ultrasound to measure the distance to the oil surface. There are no moving parts so I can't see how it could "get stuck" or indicate the wrong level (assuming you set the tank height DIP-switches right when installing it).




(ps the CR2430 battery is Li-MnO2, not Li-ion)

[Bill]

The_Doc said:

Heating Prices Cheaper in Summer then Winter ? An analysis.

Retail (Customer) Prices from the Office of National Statistics

https://thumbsnap.com/sZhs2r6F


Years grouped together. 2012 on the left, 2021 on the right.
Red bar is most expensive month, green bar is cheapest month
Chart took me about 10 mins to put together

Number of years when the most expensive month is December, January or February = 7 out of 10 years

Conclusion: 70% of the time in that last 10 years, Dec/Jan or Feb was the most expensive month to buy fuel.

but.....

Cheapest month to buy fuel:
January 20% of the time
December 20%
July 20%
November 10% of the time
June 10%
etc
etc

There are lies, damned lies and there are statistics.

Yours, a scientist

what's quite bizarre is that my father worked for Shell for 15 years selling oil contracts, but he retired in 1995

Just shows the value of anecdote!

[KTMsm]

Deep Thought said:

I presume that normally people would run a tank down to maybe 20% then order 500 or 900 litres. With prices rising daily there seems to be a mindset now - rightly or wrongly - of "i must get fuel now because its going up in price daily", so anyone with a tank at 50% is buying and probably an element of people with 70% are buying (either 300 litres or filling their tank right up).

It doesnt take much strain on the system for supply and delivery issues - like we saw with petrol - when a load of people order when they dont really need it.

^^^ This

Local supplier has taken my order with delivery in 2-3 weeks but they won't give a price until the day before

I've just bought some red for pretty much the same price and topped up with that to tide me over

A few depots would sell Kero off the yard but it seems they stopped 18 months ago, no idea if the regs changed or whether it's just trying to encourage people to use these top up schemes they are all touting

[PushedDover]

just received from our village co-op

Village Oil Cooperative said:

Dear All,

A neighbouring oil group has contacted us to let us know that today no company was prepared to take a group order at any price. Not only are prices rising daily there are significant concerns as to the supply of product from the refinery going forward.

We have therefore taken the decision to cancel the March order, and therefore any member that has placed an order with ourselves, they will need to place an independent order.

I am sure that you understand the decision we have had to make, during these unprecedented times.

Kind regards

[Jaska]

Anyone else like me pop into this thread from time to time despite having no need for heating oil at all? Or just me who finds it interesting?

[KTMsm]

PushedDover said:

just received from our village co-op

Village Oil Cooperative said:

Dear All,

A neighbouring oil group has contacted us to let us know that today no company was prepared to take a group order at any price. Not only are prices rising daily there are significant concerns as to the supply of product from the refinery going forward.

We have therefore taken the decision to cancel the March order, and therefore any member that has placed an order with ourselves, they will need to place an independent order.

It looks like the oil suppliers are using this as an opportunity to push back against the Buying groups

However several of them note that there is NO supply issue on their websites / FB but they are pushing "Our regular customers" bullst

[Deep Thought]

Nimby said:

I think we're talking about completely different products. Mine has a 10-line bar graph. The sender uses ultrasound to measure the distance to the oil surface. There are no moving parts so I can't see how it could "get stuck" or indicate the wrong level (assuming you set the tank height DIP-switches right when installing it).




(ps the CR2430 battery is Li-MnO2, not Li-ion)

Pretty much identical to ours.

It either gives a display or it doesnt. It doesnt just display random values.

If there is a display and a problem, it will flash to tell you theres an error - such as cant communicate with sender, or whatever.

If its calibrated as per the instructions it'll know the depth of the tank.

I would say most "failures" that require an emergency oil fill as they've ran out are down to people not bothering checking.

I set my mum and dads up in their kitchen directly ahead as they walk in to the kitchen. Very hard to miss. I check it every time i'm down too and my dad would be religious about checking and ordering oil anyway.

Ours is in the garage but i make a point of checking it (and have reminders set on my phone). Nobody but myself to blame if it runs out.