Day 235 Thurs 7 Jun 2007 Bosa to Bosa, Sardinia, Italy
Not much happening as the car’s now abandoned opposite the dormant petrol station and isn’t going anywhere and neither are we. Apparently the petrol station owners are protesting about proposals to deregulate the sale of petrol and derestrict the number of petrol stations. Understandably they are up in arms about the threat to their monopoly – interesting to compare petrol stations in the different countries – interesting for us that is, probably not for you but here goes anyway as there’s not much else to blog about today.
In Australia they’re deregulated and disappearing like morning dew as sites are sold for housing. Petrol retailing is dominated by the supermarkets who bought out the retail operations from the petrol companies who never made any money out of selling just fuel or so they keep telling us.
Compare this with India where despite strict regulation on sites, they are opening up everywhere; for example on the main motorway type road from Delhi to Rajasthan, in Haryana state there’s one almost every km with new ones being built in between. At present traffic volumes each car could have its own personal petrol station. Most sell just petrol although a few newer larger ones have food outlets too but there’s no way they make any money, perhaps owning a petrol station is a status thing?
In Pakistan and Nepal they are usually v small, family run businesses, untidy, littered with car parts and selling petrol from Castrol. Hundreds of CNG (compressed natural gas) stations are under construction. They advertise clean loos and wireless internet but we never found either. We also suspect the petrol, diesel and CNG all come out of the same tank.
In Turkey, there are petrol stations everywhere even on quiet roads, usually large with good food outlets, markets, mosques, free car washing and internet and massive but clean toilets. Because there are thousands of long distance buses the petrol stations are designed to cope with 4 or 5 bus loads at a time. There doesn’t seem to be any specific limitations on the number of stations and most sell some food or groceries as well. Frustratingly the advertised prices on the signboards often bear no relationship to those on the pump, appearing to show the prices they were selling petrol for before the Gulf war (remember the one which was supposed to ensure petrol supplies for the free world). However this is partly compensated for by the freebies – we have a nice set of tea glasses, hand cleaners, key rings but have eaten all the boxes of Turkish delight.
Italy is pretty primitive from a petrol retailing perspective, most stations seem to be small owned by private operators with little retailing apart from petrol. They are often kerb side in city centre streets,( a waste of good real estate) have limited hours, closed on Sundays and are self service. Because they are restricted to selling only petrol, which is expensive, they don’t make much profit hence their concerns about deregulation and the lack of anyone to clean the windscreen. Greece is the same except in Greece they don’t have any petrol stations on motorways which is very strange, mind you the motorways are strange too as they have only one lane each way, don’t have central reservations, have two way traffic and overtaking depends on the oncoming driver and the one being passed both driving on the edge of the road, all at 160km/hr which goes along way to explaining why Greece has the highest road toll in the Eu.
Warned you it would be boring, tomorrow if we are stuck here we might blog about comparative breakfasts, equally riveting
In Australia they’re deregulated and disappearing like morning dew as sites are sold for housing. Petrol retailing is dominated by the supermarkets who bought out the retail operations from the petrol companies who never made any money out of selling just fuel or so they keep telling us.
Compare this with India where despite strict regulation on sites, they are opening up everywhere; for example on the main motorway type road from Delhi to Rajasthan, in Haryana state there’s one almost every km with new ones being built in between. At present traffic volumes each car could have its own personal petrol station. Most sell just petrol although a few newer larger ones have food outlets too but there’s no way they make any money, perhaps owning a petrol station is a status thing?
In Pakistan and Nepal they are usually v small, family run businesses, untidy, littered with car parts and selling petrol from Castrol. Hundreds of CNG (compressed natural gas) stations are under construction. They advertise clean loos and wireless internet but we never found either. We also suspect the petrol, diesel and CNG all come out of the same tank.
In Turkey, there are petrol stations everywhere even on quiet roads, usually large with good food outlets, markets, mosques, free car washing and internet and massive but clean toilets. Because there are thousands of long distance buses the petrol stations are designed to cope with 4 or 5 bus loads at a time. There doesn’t seem to be any specific limitations on the number of stations and most sell some food or groceries as well. Frustratingly the advertised prices on the signboards often bear no relationship to those on the pump, appearing to show the prices they were selling petrol for before the Gulf war (remember the one which was supposed to ensure petrol supplies for the free world). However this is partly compensated for by the freebies – we have a nice set of tea glasses, hand cleaners, key rings but have eaten all the boxes of Turkish delight.
Italy is pretty primitive from a petrol retailing perspective, most stations seem to be small owned by private operators with little retailing apart from petrol. They are often kerb side in city centre streets,( a waste of good real estate) have limited hours, closed on Sundays and are self service. Because they are restricted to selling only petrol, which is expensive, they don’t make much profit hence their concerns about deregulation and the lack of anyone to clean the windscreen. Greece is the same except in Greece they don’t have any petrol stations on motorways which is very strange, mind you the motorways are strange too as they have only one lane each way, don’t have central reservations, have two way traffic and overtaking depends on the oncoming driver and the one being passed both driving on the edge of the road, all at 160km/hr which goes along way to explaining why Greece has the highest road toll in the Eu.
Warned you it would be boring, tomorrow if we are stuck here we might blog about comparative breakfasts, equally riveting
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