UK Motorists Willing To Pay The Price For Petrol

With a barrel of oil now touching $98, petrol in the UK is now over the £1 a litre mark with more price increases no doubt to follow.

In the same way that the economy seems to be behaving like the gently warmed frog as the price of oil goes up, motorists seem to think that they can also go on for quite a long way yet and absorb price increases.

Research published by car insurer esure reveals that petrol prices would have to almost double to £1.83 to stop drivers reaching for their car keys.

Driving Whatever The Cost

The “carry on pumping” poll commissioned by esure and conducted in May 2006 by ICM on a random sample of 644 drivers, demonstrates that a massive majority of motorists in the UK (55%) would never part with their cars in favour of public transport - regardless of cost.

One in three drivers display an incredible disregard for the amount they fork out for fuel, not monitoring the cheapest petrol prices in their local area, never mind driving the extra mile to get the best budget deal.

The research also reveals that 37% of motorists will not consider replacing their car with a more fuel-efficient or environmentally friendly car in the next three years. The vast majority of motorists (79%) haven’t changed their attitude to buying petrol despite the threat of huge price rises.

Although there are a number of fuel-saving practices that drivers can easily adopt to increase the miles per gallon their car can achieve, 72% of drivers do know what to do, don’t make the effort to put these into practice or monitor their car’s fuel efficiency.

Food Miles

What this poll unwittingly reveals is how little most people are aware of how deeply oil is embedded into our way of life. Oil is the essential and main ingredient not just in transport but everything from our medicines to clothes and most importantly our food. Used in fertilizers, pesticides and to transport it to the shops - our food is awash in oil.

Food travels further these days partly because the centralised systems of supermarkets have taken over from local and regional markets. It defies common sense, but a pint of milk or a crop of potatoes can be transported many miles to be packaged at a central depot and then sent many miles back to be sold near where they were produced in the first place.

Food transport accounted for an estimated 30 billion vehicle kilometres in 2002, of which 82%
are in the UK and The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says that food miles rose by 15 per cent between 1992 and 2002. So an increase in transport costs will have a direct impact on the cost of food.

What Level Economic Impact?

As the price of a barrel of oil continues to rise without much apparent effect on western economies, the Financial Times speculated recently that the price per barrel would need to reach around $130 before it had significant impact.

We have built distribution systems on the basis that there will continue to be unlimited supplies of cheap oil - and that using it has no impact. None of this is true and we are soon to be faced with the consequences.

This tendency to ignore rising prices may prove to be a benefit in enabling society to adjust to the effects of Peak Oil, rather than as some predict going into a tailspin. Time will tell.