Guido thinks that closing Grangemouth for two days will make the country run out of fuel.
No, I don’t know either.
I also don’t know whether this is true or whether it’s an urban legend. My guess is that it’s true.
The storage capacity of the fuel tanks of all the cars and lorries on the road is greater than the storage capacity of the entire supply system. We don’t actually need to have an interruption of supply: we just need everyone to try and top off their tanks at the same time.
14 responses so far ↓
1 john b // Apr 23, 2008 at 12:43 pm
It’s a shame that people are paranoid fucktards; unfortunately, given that people are paranoid fucktards, panic buying is an entirely rational individual response.
2 dearieme // Apr 23, 2008 at 12:54 pm
The company must be awfully short of white collar staff. In my day we’d have set up camp beds and run the bugger ourselves: experience showed that a motley crew of engineers and scientists could usually run process plant better than the operators. And in those days the T & G knew it and would back down at the sound of “Stand by your beds!”. The senior white collar people were somewhat less keen than the junior: the juniors got wonderful overtime pay while the seniors had to hope for an annual bonus. There’s a price to pay for not being able to call people in from elsewhere, and from Research, Design and other functions that this company presumably doesn’t have. Them wus the days!
3 Kay Tie // Apr 23, 2008 at 1:06 pm
“panic buying is an entirely rational individual response.”
I heard a rumour that Bradford and Bingley has run out of cash..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2008/04/20/matt.gif
4 Gallimaufry // Apr 23, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Apparently a garage in Kirkaldy has increased prices already: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/04/23/1-45-a-litre-86908-20391982/
5 JuliaM // Apr 23, 2008 at 2:31 pm
“…we just need everyone to try and top off their tanks at the same time.”
Just in time for May 1st too…
6 Kay Tie // Apr 23, 2008 at 2:55 pm
“A petrol station in Kirkcaldy, Fife, confirmed it had briefly charged £1.45 a litre for diesel on Monday, with unleaded at £1.25, but said the high prices had been a computer error and had since been dropped.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/23/npetrol123.xml
7 Matthew // Apr 23, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I think there are about 30m cars on the road. If they have 10 gallon fuel tanks, that’s 300m gallons. There’s also something like 5m lorries, which might have 30 (??) gallon fuel tanks, so that would be 450m gallons. So 25.8 gallons per barrel, that makes 17m (oil) barrels storage capacity in cars.
8 Guido Fawkes // Apr 23, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Busted.
I define “run dry” as it will be reported that petrol stations across Britain are running dry.
9 Kay Tie // Apr 23, 2008 at 5:16 pm
“I define “run dry” as it will be reported that petrol stations across Britain are running dry.”
I hope that Jonah Broon doesn’t make a personal visit to the plant..
10 Fed_Up // Apr 23, 2008 at 8:29 pm
“unfortunately, given that people are paranoid fucktards, panic buying is an entirely rational individual response.”
Generally, in these type of situations I avoid panic buying…I do however take sensible precautionary measures.
11 Andy Cooke // Apr 23, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Following Matthew’s comment:
So 25.8 gallons per barrel, that makes 17m (oil) barrels storage capacity in cars.[and lorries].
And, of course, only about half of that storage capacity is available for panic buying. At any given snapshot, some cars are full, others running on fumes, with all stages in between. On average, fuel tanks will be about half full.
So a panic buy will consume less than 9 million (oil) barrels of volume.
12 Geoff // Apr 24, 2008 at 1:27 am
… actually, on average a little more than half full, as lots will have full tanks but very few will be running on fumes.
13 Tom // Apr 24, 2008 at 12:54 pm
“Generally, in these type of situations I avoid panic buying…I do however take sensible precautionary measures.”
Same
14 Guido Fawkes // May 29, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Those headlines did show up as predicted - didn’t they.
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