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or Heinz Baked Beanz as the national illiteratcy programme, promoted over a number of years, spreads.
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teso own brand beans v heinz baked beans.....nuff said
Is this a comment on petrol or beans? I can't see what they have in common apart from emissions.
Do you mean Heinz beans have more additives?
I increasingly find some of the cryptic answers on this board more difficult to fathom than the Torygraph crossword.
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Sorry my cheap shot at the abuse of the English Language. Don't try to run your car on beans, baked or otherwise.
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>>>> I increasingly find some of the cryptic answers on this board more difficult to fathom than the Torygraph crossword.
Try the General Knowledge crossword on Saturdays, that's quite good.
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Not quite a valid comparison MJ! There is certainly a taste difference but cheap baked beans won't do hundreds of £s worth of damage to your body!
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The petrol for all stations in the UK comes from a wide variety of refineries and there are no specific refineries for supermarket fuel. The exception is that it is said that Shell V-power (formerly Optimax) came from one refinery only.
The silicon problem could easily have affected oil company branded sites as well, but the storage depot only supplied the supermarkets.
Seems like we are all potentially affected, and it could happen again, although checking procedures will be improved
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With regard to standard grade petrol.
The crude that goes in to the refineries is all same.
The petrol that exits the refineries is all same.
The same tankers owned by the same firms (not the oil companies or the supermarkets) in different liveries load up at the same delivery point. Post receiving the petrol delivery fuel retailers add different additives, this is the only difference.
Whether you believe these additives are useful is entirely your own opinion. If the additives had any provable benefits then I assume the oil companies would prove these and put this information in advertisements. It needs to be proved for the advertisement to be acceptable to the Advertising Standards Authority. They do not do this either because they can not or they chose not to. Again I leave what you chose to believe to yourself.
Bottom line even if you believe that the oil company branded fuel is better than supermarket branded fuel where two station are in reasonably close proximity to each other then they usually sell for the same price so you can have your cake and eat it.
An accident in a storage facility run by a sub-contractor can happen to anyone and in my opinion it would be foolish to draw any firm conclusions from that alone.
Premium grade fuels are a separate discussion
Fair enough?
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If supermarket petrol quality is same as that of say Shell, BP etc, then why do people pay more in Shall/BP?
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If supermarket petrol quality is same as that of say Shell, BP etc, then why do people pay more in Shall/BP?
Why do people pay more for a VW/Audi than a Skoda, when it's the same manufacturer?
Because people believe they are getting *better* quality products; whereas in fact at the end of the day they do exactly the same job (with the exception of Shell V-Power, BP Ultimate as these are classed as "performance fuels")
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Further to Niallster's post ,all fuel has to meet a British Standard and if it does it should not foul up your oxygen sensor or any other part of your car! Premium brands may be better but the cheapest BS fuel you can buy should not wreck you car!
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Further to Niallster's post ,all fuel has to meet a British Standard and if it does it should not foul up your oxygen sensor or any other part of your car! Premium brands may be better but the cheapest BS fuel you can buy should not wreck you car!
That last sentence is simply wonderful :^D
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Wonderful ANd true! A killer combination! Unless of course BS standards are meaningless?
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Thanks everybody for the replies.
Niallster, I'm interested that the only difference is in the additives. In that case though, why do supermarkets go to companies like Harvest Energy to get their fuel, instead of going straight to refinery owners like BP and Esso? Wouldn't it be cheaper to cut out the middle man? What exactly is the added value from going to Harvest Energy?
Regarding the accident in a storage facility theory, I believe the storage company involved have already made a statement that the contamination was in the fuel that they received from their customer, without saying who this was exactly. Would this have been Harvest Energy?
The whole supply chain is very unclear to me.
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"Further to Niallster's post ,all fuel has to meet a British Standard and if it does it should not foul up your oxygen sensor or any other part of your car"
Apparently BS doe s not cover silicone(e) levels in unleaded...?
madf
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why do supermarkets go to companieslike Harvest Energy to get their fuel, instead of going straight to refinery owners like BP and Esso?
Esso own 1 refinery in the UK - BP sold their last one a few weeks back.
BP are not interested in Refineries in the UK and want to concentrate on Exploration & Production and let someone else worry about refining and delivering via a haulage company.
Thye then sell it under the BP named filling station although the outlet will be franchised / independent seller. i.e. Branding but not the hassle of refining, delivering and selling to the public
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Alf,
It is an established fact that the only difference is the additive and these additives are only added when when the petrol is allocated to the end retailer as each retailer has their own mix of additives. Any tanker driver will tell you this. They all get the same petrol from the same tank and then add the branded additive depending on who they are delivering to that day.
It is always third parties that state for example Shell additives makes Shell petrol 'better' than Tescos petrol that has 'only' Tescos additives. The retail companies never state this themselves. They may say their petrol is 'good' but they never say it is 'better than'.
As to supply, there are 11 refineries in UK, by memory two are BP, two Total, one is Shell and the other I don't know.
I assume the supermarkets buy from whoever to get the best deal they can at the time.
Harvest is the largest non-oil company storage company they do not own any refinery I aware of and are just a wholesaler. From the press releases they seem to be saying that their storage facility was fine but their petrol supplier was at fault. As there is likely to be millions involved the lawyers are bound to be all over this.
Finally all the petrol retailers are party to local support agreements so that if one runs dry the other switches any excess supply it might have to help out in return for a favour itself down the line. Thus quite literally Shell petrol containing Shell additives could come out of a Tesco pump and vice versa. OK this would only happen rarely but its an interesting point if one is 'sub-standard' in any way. Premium fuels are not part of such support agreements.
That about as much as I know.
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Falkirk is ahead of me. It seems BP had two refineries but no longer.
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Googling around, it looks as if Petroplus signed an agreement on 1st Feb with BP to buy Coryton, but I can't find anything saying that Coryton has actually transferred to Petroplus as yet.
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So I guess the job of Harvest as a wholesaler is to get the best price for their retail customers and then to handle blending and distribution. If I understand correctly, then Harvest purchase the petrol from the refineries, store it (sub-contracted to the storage facility company such as Vopak), and then transport it to the retail customer's (eg: Tescos) petrol stations using appropriately branded road tankers, blending it with the retailer's additive mix on extract from storage to road tanker. Other than the blending process, Harvest are not involved with production of the petrol in any way.
Branded petrol supply follows the same process, the only difference being that a wholesaler isn't involved and the petrol station operator (eg: BP) handles the whole process.
I guess supply from refinery to storage facility is by pipeline, and can come from any of the UK refineries (www.linewatch.co.uk/network.htm ).
No doubt we will hear in due course which refinery supplied the contaminated petrol. It sounds like Harvest, Tesco's and Morrison's have just been very unlucky.
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It appears that I missed a critical step in trying to work out the process of petrol production & supply. A report (from Greenergy) indicates that Harvest Energy also blend in additives before (or whilst?) petrol is in the storage tanks, and that the contamination appears to have com from one of theses additives (possibly toluene). So Harvest Energy are clearly not just a wholesaler after all, and it seems that the petrol in our tanks contains a whole cocktail of additives blended in at various stages in the supply chain.
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but cheap baked beans won't do hundreds of £s worthof damage to your body!
I think you will find the high salt and sugar content will cost you a lot more than just hundreds of pounds.
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Bad comparison - don't know if they still make them, but a few years ago Heinz had to admit it was supplying Tesco with their budget beans and very good they were, although slightly thinner sauce my very discerning children were fooled for ages!
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Tesco owns massive stakes in the oil company who supplied the fuel.
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Time to dump the Tesco shares !
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Just checked the price - up 10 and a bit % on the year. SWMBO will be screaming Sell Sell Selll ! tomorrow !
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If Tesco knock 10p a litre off their petrol , would there be Q tomorrow morning?, or just old cars perhaps?
That woul dbe the way to get the punters back in
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The EN (or BS if you want the old nomenclature) is the basic requirement for fuels. Some fuel manufacturers (Shell, BP, Texaco) have identified that the EN is not sufficient to prevent carbon and other deposits building up on the combustion chamber and valve stems. They sell fuel with an additional package of detergents/higher octane or cetane/ reduced sulphur, for a part of the market (high compression, ECU with adjustment for octane, direct injection fuel etc) where optimal output and economy, and preventing deterioration of performance, is important. They say, and have submitted to test, that the fuel has certain advantages over the standard brew. Cynics may decide to use non-premium on the basis that all businesses are liars, the tight and the uninformed won't care, but some motorists are inclined to believe test results, in Evo etc, where improved power output, and cleaning of the combustion chambers seems to have been verified.
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Nortones what you say is correct in that premium grades such as Optimax have been proved to have benefits but cost they more than standard grades. Whether this benefit is worth the money is up to an individual to decide. I do not think it is necessary to call someone who decides the benefits are not worth the extra costs tight or uninformed.
No tests have ever shown any differentiation between different brands of standard grades of petrol. I think all previous posters have been careful to state that they were talking about standard grades.
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>>(with the exception of Shell V-Power, BP Ultimate as these are classed as "performance fuels".
So Tesco 99 is clearly not a performance fuel. I bow to your superior intelligence. Not.
The oil-company branded 'performance' fuels have a higher octane rating that is essential for certain performance cars. Otherwise ,I am still awaiting double blind scientific test results indicating that everything that is claimed for them is true. I doubt it somehow.
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I have yet to see any papers published by the fuel companies (in respected journals like SAE) that highlight proven advantages of their 'premium' fuels. Obviously higher octane is of value if you car can make use of it (and some cars require it - especially JDM grey imports).
Also note that these fuel suppliers tend to be quite vague in their advertising claims for their fuels....
Where fuels above the base EN spec are required (hgiher octane, low sulphur) then the vehicle manufacturer will let you know.
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I realise the ASA is not quite of the standing of SAE, but they have looked at claims: www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/non_broadcast/Adj...2 The fundamental issue with detergency etc was accepted. Shell were hit for exaggerating power increases, though not the fact that hgher octane could give more power in certain engines.
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EN590 does not seem to have a requirement for fuel detergency etc:forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/env/fuel_quality/li.../
stakeholder_2005/stakeholder_comments/acea_responsepdf/_EN_1.0_&a=d
See para 3. The USA and Sweden had a requirement in 2005, Until the Fuels directive is amended to require additisation, fuel can still be sold without the additives required to prevent deposits.
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So Tesco 99 is clearly not a performance fuel. I bow to your superior intelligence. Not.
Ok, I forgot about that one, but I was talking more about fuel in general (ie, the 95 Ron stuff)
Am I forgiven? ;o)
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"The crude that goes in to the refineries is all same.
The petrol that exits the refineries is all same."
No!
Only a certain type of crude oil is destined for processing into petrol. Other types of crude oil are better suited for processing into heavier oils, for example. Each hole in the ground gives a slightly different type of crude oil.
Whilst there exists a standard to which all petrol must conform, these are not hard and fast rules. They will set minima and maxima for the various characteristics such that the petrol produced will very slightly over time. It is based on a natural product after all. Many of these differences will be quite subtle and are simply not a issue to most motorists. Engines that are more highly tuned, such as those for racing, will exhibit performance differences depending on the fractional makeup of the fuel.
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So Tesco 99 is clearly not a performance fuel. I bow to your superior intelligence. Not.
>>Ok, I forgot about that one, but I was talking more about fuel in general (ie, the 95 Ron stuff)
>>Am I forgiven? ;o)
I'll forgive you anything, old Mod, for the pivotal -^- role you have in my life. However, it is only the higher octane fules that are sold as premium fules. Optimate, Ultimax, Texicam, Brontigrate etc. etc. The lower grade fules are all fules.
95 RON stuff is 95 RON stuff which is suitable for most cars on the road.
98 (/99/97) RON stuff is 98 (/99/97) RON stuff that suits certain cars because they benefit from the higher octane rating; not because they benefit from the addertives.
When Aprilia comes up with a peer-reviewed journal from one of his professional journals indicating the essential nature of these alleged addertives, then I'll no longer be so vi(tu)perative about them. Until then, it's a marketing success story.
Tesco and Morrisons were jolly unlucky. It could presumably just as easily have happened to Shell as they all get their petrol from third party suppliers..
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