Black Gold

The fuel price here fluctuates daily and differs between stations even between the same brands. At time it can go up to €1.5 and more per litre. Today’s price for RON95 is €1.429 per litre. That’s equivalent to about B$3.15. Compare that to B$0.53 per litre back home – that’s 6 times more costly here. Today for instance it cost us €74 for a full tank which is 52 litres. That’s a staggering B$156 spent on fuel today! Imagine if you have to pay that amount in Brunei. Fuel taxes are very high in Europe. For the Netherlands the tax account for nearly 80% of the price. It’s a huge contribution to the Government coffers.

On the bigger picture, a barrel of crude oil nowadays is about US$90 per barrel. It did hit US$100 for one day last year. A barrel got 159 litres -that about $B0.94 for cost of a litre of raw oil which has yet to be transported, refined and re-exported again. Yet we are paying only $B0.53 for a litre of finished product. You can easily appreciate that the cheap cost of petrol we are paying in Brunei is actually heavily subsidised by our Government.