JNugent
With very simple refining, a given crude oil will produce a certain blend of products. However, I think it is overly simplistic to suggest that taxation be used to encourage use of a more plentiful fraction when the refiners have ample experience and will to alter the product mix to suit their customers' needs. If I had to guess, diesel might be cheaper to refine because it is a less specific mix of various hydrocarbons than petrol. But the difference might only be pennies per litre, and if you are looking at savings of 25-40% at an artificially inflated pump price, the refining differences are just noise.
We will have to disagree. The Japanese and the Americans loathe diesel vehicles, and I am no great fan.
No, well me neither. But I think that if tax must be used, it should be used for the right reasons and in the right way. These don't include letting one segment of the population enjoy cheaper energy because it happens to be the same stuff used by some powerful lobbies, or applying duties on some stupid volumetric basis for quite different products. (Would you like to pay 70p-litre of tax on your natural gas ?)
Oh boo hoo. Such tax initiatives are clearly largely political and come with no guarantees. Anyone who paid for a conversion should have done their own sums and made sure that they wouldn't have lost out over a reasonable timescale had the tax been subsequently increased. Besides, I clearly implied that (presuming LPG is deemed more acceptable on an environmental basis), some element of taxation should be reduced.
-- "I'm Not Schizophrenic, And Neither Am I."
