Sucked In

As time progresses it is becoming increasingly astounding to me that people seem to be placing such exponential importance on petrol prices, especially at this early stage. It's almost difficult to comprehend the huge panic that will undoubtedly eventuate when the crash really comes. Just yesterday, in "celebration" of the re-opening of the Mobil station on the eastern side of Wairau Road in the North Shore and also to attract an early injection of profit, petrol was discounted by ten cents per litre at that particular service station. The cars queuing up at the service station resulted in a lengthy traffic jam that stretched far up the hill towards the Glenfield Road traffic lights. Effects were also felt in the Wairau Park commercial area, where the traffic was at a standstill much of the time.

It begs the question: was the petrol discount really worth the amount of time of which countless people were raped as a result of the special? Even those with excessively large gas-guzzling cars who filled their tanks from empty would have only saved around eight or nine dollars. Saving that amount of money is really not a big deal, particularly considering the overall amount of money that drivers would have been spending anyway. In a moment of weakness, and because I had some time up my sleeve, I myself ended up filling up my car. I was guided across the crowded forecourt as if I were the pilot Boeing being shown to the appropriate gate after having landed at an airport. The staff member then took my order and filled Oculus with twenty-one litres of petrol.

Full service, for once? Usually petrol stations would be expected to skimp on that as a cost-cutting measure. On this occasion, though, they were obviously so confident that their sale was going to achieve such a profit that they knew they needn't play it safe. The unusual provision of full service also strangely compelled me to go inside and buy an energy drink as I paid for my petrol. It tasted terrible and cancelled out the saving of roughly two dollars that I had made by queuing for fifteen minutes at that particular petrol station. This serves well to reinforce, as Mat explained to me, the idea that service stations nowadays draw a lot of their profit from their minimart retail facilities as opposed to the petrol. BP made an announcement last week saying that they are actually losing money on each litre of petrol sold.


One of National's most recent policy announcements made by their finance spokesperson and current MP for Helensville, John Key, was a statement of the possibility of lowering the petrol tax by five cents. The fact that politicians are zeroing in on this reinforces quite clearly the notion that the amount of importance that New Zealanders are placing on how much they pay for petrol is simply ridiculous. Also emphasising the pathetic nature of this situation is that even people like me -- whilst being very much sceptical about people in general being so concerned about petrol prices -- are also being subconsciously overcome by the fear factory that is the media and are consequently buying into petrol bargain specials and the like. I think Jeanette Fitzsimons denounced National's desperate petrol tax cut gesture best in the Herald article on the issue:

"...all our information suggests this is a long-term problem, that prices are going to continue to rise and the very worst thing you can do for New Zealand's fuel security in the future is to try to keep petrol artificially cheap when it isn't."