Following a spike in international crude oil prices, state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has announced a hike in petrol prices by Rs. 2.95 per litre, which will come into effect from Tuesday night. “Other two state-run refiners Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) will also hike petrol prices by Rs. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘petrol’
BPCL hikes petrol price by Rs. 2.95 per litre
December 15th, 2010 |
No Comments
Pump up the volume
September 3rd, 2010 |
No Comments
News the component and tyre workers’ dispute is also involving many of South Africa’s forecourts reminds me of a time when I had a student weekend job in a petrol station as we refer to them in the UK.
For the princely sum of £1 per hour – £1 mind – I would trot out from my little hutch and fill punters’ cars with petrol, diesel and whatever else they needed doing.
The manager – perhaps realising he wasn’t exactly paying me movie star wages – decided to dangle the incentive of selling oil to the same customers – with the result I would use my non-existent sales skills to harangue drivers into buying the product -whether they needed it or not.
Health and safety didn’t appear to be quite the priority it is now either – I would periodically clamber up onto the massive lorries delivering 25,000 litres of petrol a time – and ‘dip the tanks’ – just to make sure the volume was right, while also inspecting the mammoth underground tanks.
Indeed, while wrestling once with the extraordinarily heavy manhole cover over one of those tanks, I dropped it onto my foot resulting in an extremely hasty visit to the local doctor who managed to patch me up.
Still, the work was incredibly varied – living in a small town I knew a fair amount of the patrons – while kindly souls would sometimes give me a tip as I sat freezing on winter mornings in the hutch.
We’ve pretty much lost that personal touch in the UK now – my local petrol station has an option to pay at the pump rather than the kiosk – but it seems South Africa has resolutely kept to the old ways.
The issue appears not to be one of choice there however, but regulation – forecourts are tightly controlled by the government – but I would wager a bet that South Africans might well miss the pump attendants if they went.
I used to say I worked in the oil business when I was in the petrol station, but here’s a chap who’s dad had the same job as me, but er, is worth slightly more.
Cleaner petrol, diesel to cost more from April 1
March 24th, 2010 |
No Comments
Cleaner — but costlier — Euro-IV standard petrol and diesel will be available from April 1 in 13 cities across the country, Petroleum Secretary S. Sundareshan said here Wednesday.
At a function to mark the launch of the cleaner fuel, he said: “From April 1, Euro-IV standard fuel will be available in 13 cities in India”. [...]
Shanghai Hui Yang wins contracts to install solar-powered energy systems for 20 petrol stations
March 8th, 2010 |
No Comments
Shanghai Hui Yang New Energy Technology Co., a company in which Swing Media Technology Group has agreed to acquire an 80% stake last October, has been contracted to install solar-powered energy systems for 20 petrol stations in China.
South Russia bus crash leaves 20 dead
July 24th, 2009 |
No Comments
At least 20 people have been killed in a crash between a bus and a petrol tanker in south Russia, officials say. The accident happened on a highway near Samarskoye, south of Rostov-on-Don.
Taser-hit man burst into flames
July 21st, 2009 |
No Comments
A man in Western Australia was engulfed in flames when police officers fired a Taser stun gun at him.
Police say they used the Taser on Ronald Mitchell, 36, when he ran at them carrying a container of petrol and a cigarette lighter.
They said that Mr Mitchell, who lives in a remote Aboriginal community, had been sniffing petrol. They suggested the cigarette lighter started the fire.
Mr Mitchell is in a critical condition in hospital with third degree burns.
Bare hands
Western Australia Police say they went to the community of Warburton, about 1,500 km (950 miles) north-east of Perth, in response to a complaint.
They say they used the Taser on Mr Mitchell when he came out of the house and ran at them.
He burst into flames. One officer pushed him to the ground and smothered the fire with his bare hands, police said.
Mr Mitchell’s sister told The Australian newspaper that her brother had been sniffing petrol.
"He must have put petrol on his face, then the policeman shot him with the Taser, that’s when the flames happened," she said.
Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan said Mr Mitchell was a known violent offender, and defended the police officers’ deployment of the Taser.
He told reporters: "The only other choice they would have had is to use a police-issue firearm, and the consequences would almost certainly have been far more grave."
He said the police internal affairs department would investigate the incident, saying there was "a very strong possibility that the fire was caused by the lighter in the hand of the offender".
Review call
Mr Mitchell was charged with assault to prevent arrest and possession of a sniffing substance.
Dennis Eggington, of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, called for an urgent review of Taser use.
Aboriginal people, he said, were often in poor health, which made them particularly vulnerable to stun weapons.
A Taser works by firing two barbs which penetrate the skin and discharge 50,000 volts along two copper wires attached to the gun.
Amnesty International has called them "potentially lethal".</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Packet of cigarettes leaves US man $23 quadrillion in debt
July 15th, 2009 |
No Comments
A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes – only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.
That is $23 quadrillion (£14 quadrillion) – many times the US national debt.
"I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card," said Josh Muszynski, from New Hampshire.
He says his appeals to his bank first met with little understanding, though it eventually corrected the error.
It also waived the usual $15 overdraft fee.
"It was all back to normal," Mr Muszynski told his local television station, WMUR. "They reversed the negative balance fee, which was nice."
Debt crisis
His nightmare began when he checked his online bank account a few hours after buying the cigarettes.
He thought he would be a couple of hundred dollars in the black. But his overdraft had pushed him into the red – by an amount equivalent to many times the entire US national debt.
"It is a lot of money in the negative," he said. "Something I could never, ever, afford to pay back.
"My children could not afford it, grandchildren, nothing like that."
In panic, Mr Muszynski rushed back to the petrol station, but they were unable to help. He says he then spent two hours on the phone with the Bank of America.
Eventually, it assured him it would be fixed – and the next morning, it had been.
But no-one has yet explained to Mr Muszynski how such a astonishing error could have been made. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.