FuelClub Discount

With Scottish boats unable to put to sea because of soaring fuel costs, the resultant failure of Scotland to fully catch its share of fish could result in the future reallocation of quotas by the EU to subsidised foreign fleets.

This will be just one of the many concerns that the SFF will highlight to Cabinet Secretary Richard Lochhead at a meeting in Aberdeen later today (12 May) to discuss the fuel crisis.

Bertie Armstrong, chief executive, said: “The obvious question is why fishing should be more deserving of support compared with other industry sectors such as road haulage.
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The UK’s leading independent solid fuel manufacturer, Maxibrite, has been sold in a multi-million pound deal that will safeguard 40 jobs.

The Llantrisant company has been acquired by Coal 4 Energy.

The new majority owner is a joint venture company formed by UK Coal and Hargreaves Services – two leading UK groups with interests in and around the coal industry. The new owners will be looking to develop the business and add capacity to the site on the Mwyndy Industrial Estate in Llantrisant.

The deal, believed to be in the region of nearly ?5m, was brokered by Cardiff-based chartered accountants Hodge Bakshi, who were called in last summer to safeguard the jobs and find a new owner for Maxibrite, which serves the domestic fuel market in the UK as well as exporting to the Irish Republic, France, Belgium and Norway.
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Opposition leaders said ministers had been “caught napping” by the strike at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, adding that the dispute had serious national consequences.

The industry body warned that the closure of the BP Forties pipeline – which supplies one third of the UK’s oil and gas – would cost ?50?million a day and urged ministers to stop the country being “held to ransom”.

The dispute is between workers and the plant’s owner, Ineos, over the decision to close a final salary pension scheme to new workers.

It appeared no closer to being resolved yesterday and the Unite union, which represents about 800 of the striking workers, said that while there are no firm plans, “there will be the possibility of further strikes”.
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What does the Grangemouth oil refinery do?

The plant, on the Firth of Forth, separates crude North Sea oil into usable commodities like petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and heating oil. The attached petro-chemical plant produces plastics like polypropylene and polyethylene, used by many industries.

How important is it?

Grangemouth is Scotland’s only major refinery and its main fuel supplier. Most Scottish filling stations and many in northern England depend on it, as do Scotland’s airports. It accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of Britain’s refining capacity, processing about 210,000 barrels of North Sea crude oil a day. It produces nine million litres of fuel a day - enough to fill the tanks of about 200,000 small cars.

What impact will the 48-hour shutdown have on petrol and diesel supplies?

Malcolm Wicks, the energy minister, has said he “cannot guarantee” that stations will not temporarily run out. However, there should be no problem with shortages as long as motorists do not start to panic buy. Analysts have warned prices could rise to ?1.50 per litre.
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U.K. Coal Plc, the nation’s largest producer of the fuel, said full-year profit rose more than fivefold on record prices and a jump in the value of its property holdings.

Net income increased to 94 million pounds ($187 million), or 59.9 pence a share, from 17.5 million pounds, or 11.7 pence, a year earlier, the Doncaster, England-based company said today in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service. Sales dropped 3.3 percent to 328.5 million pounds.

“The world coal price has almost doubled. We have successfully moved our overall sales prices closer to the market price,” Chairman David Jones said in the statement.
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Up to 100,000 households will receive help with their fuel bills under a deal with power companies brokered by the Government.

An extra ?225 million will be provided by the six biggest energy firms to help those struggling to pay rising power bills, but this has been described as a “drop in the ocean” for Devon and Cornwall.

In an announcement yesterday Business Secretary John Hutton said the companies would spend ?150 million by the year 2010 on social assistance on top of ?100 million over the next year and ?125 million in 2009-10.

The Government said that if the money was just used to offset bills it could remove up to 100,000 people from fuel poverty. Households which spend 10 per cent or more of their income on fuel bills are considered to fall into this category.

But Adam Paynter, the Executive Member for Environment in Cornwall, said this money was “next to nothing compared to the costs we’ve got” and described it as a “drop in the ocean”.
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