by Noelle Knox
17-10-05
Eric Niakissa knows putting cooking oil in his
gas tank is illegal in France, but with pump prices at $ 5.90 a gallon for
diesel, he's willing to take the risk.
"When I started to put (colza) oil in my car, I only used one or two litres
because I was afraid, and I didn't know if it would work," says Niakissa, a
student who drives a 2002 Skoda Fabia car. "After several weeks, everything was
fine, so I chose to use more oil. And since December 2004, I've been putting 50
% oil in my car and have had no problems," and he saves at least $ 30 a month.
Americans cringe at the average $ 2.80-a-gallon pump price, but people in
Western Europe haven't seen prices that low in almost two years.
Because European governments tax gas so heavily (taxes account for 70 % of the
price of gas here, vs. 27 % in the USA), the recent rise in oil prices has
people here looking for creative, if not always legal, ways to save money when
they fill up their cars or heat their homes.
Fabien Kay, who works for the bio-diesel company Prolea in France, says
drivers who add cooking oil to their gas tanks are risking "a lot of technical
problems in newer cars."
In addition to putting cooking oil in their diesel cars (half of passenger cars
sold in Europe now are diesel because the fuel is cheaper and the cars get
better mileage), more people are riding bikes to work or taking public transit.
They also are crossing borders in search of cheaper fuel, refusing to pay
heating bills and switching to wood-burning stoves.
The governments in several countries, including France, Germany and Poland,
are giving tax breaks on heating oil to low-income families. France also
distributed $ 450 mm to businesses that have been especially hit, such as
fishing, trucking and farming.
In France, the price of premium gasoline is $ 7.18 a gallon. But Francois Loos,
the minister of industry in France, said the government decided against lowering
taxes on fuel because people are driving more slowly and less often, and fuel
consumption is down 3 % this year from last.
"Two months ago, everyone thought there could be higher revenues for the state
and that we could give this additional revenue to the people... but we have
none."
Higher fee to drive in London
In London, the mayor has tried to discourage driving into the city by doubling
the size of the "congestion zone." Drivers must now pay £ 8, or almost $ 16 a
day, to drive into London.
"It's outrageous," Edward Stankovic says after paying £ 54.50 (then about $ 100)
to fill the tank of his Seat Leon sedan at a Shell station in north London in
September. “Most of it is going to the government," he says, complaining of how
British citizens pay among the highest rate in taxes per litre of fuel: nearly
63 % of the price of a litre of gasoline. Stankovic now rides his bike to work.
In Germany, drivers living near the borders of Poland and the Czech Republic
drive across to buy gas for about $ 4.85 a gallon, almost $ 1 less than they pay
at home because fuel taxes are lower. Germany's Federal Statistical Office
announced that surging energy prices pushed inflation to a four-year high of 2.5
% in September.
"In the household energy sector, heating costs rose by 20 %, natural gas
increased 11.9 % and electricity 4.3 % in the last year," the office said.
Heating oil costs alone rose by 40 % from September 2004.
It's so bad that a number of small community governments are refusing to pay
their gas bills or are unilaterally refusing to pay the higher prices. And many
Germans are turning to old-fashioned, wood-burning stoves this winter to heat
their homes.
"A growing number of people are calling and asking where they can get wood,"
says Jan Engel, a German forestry service spokesman. "It's really quite
economical compared to other heating sources at the moment." He said the town of
Eberswalde, about 35 miles north of Berlin, was even building a wood-fired power
plant to supply heat and electricity to some 50,000 homes in the area.
But not everybody is grumbling about their heating bills. In east Germany,
tens of thousands of people still use coal predominantly to heat their
apartments and homes. Inconvenient and dirty, coal is considerably cheaper than
either natural gas or heating oil.
"People always make fun of you for having (coal) heating, but now they're
getting theirs," says Franziska Rieder, a 28-year-old graduate student at
Berlin's Free University. "A lot of my friends now can't afford to heat their
apartments. They're going to freeze the whole winter."
Source: USA Today