How would the results be used?
If such a test was repeated a year later and produced quite different results what would you conclude?
Who pays for it?
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Are all the same? 91 isn’t always - some places it’s LAF. Everyone assures us it is ok, but everyone I know goes for 95 which isn’t LAF …
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Call it a baseline, and if next year gets different results, then start working out why. What if butter testing is done again next year and it comes out different? Look for how come? Fuel testing would be paid for by the same people that paid for butter testing, completely non-partisan.
That would be Choice subscriptions and donations. There would be a serious think if Choice should spend those dollars replicating what regulators should be doing, as well as whether they have the lab equipment in house or would need to buy/hire it.
Possibly beyond Choice’s financial and possibly technical capability.
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And that’s fair enough. It was an idea, and through this community we now know more than we did before. Thanks.
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Such a result would probably indicate variations in transport and storage, the things you don’t want to know about.
If it does form a baseline what then? If this mere curiosity or is there a destination in mind?
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For the same money, should I buy brand X, Y or Z?
I believe that there is enough information posted in the thread that it doesn’t matter whether one buys X, Y or Z. Buying the right fuel for the motor (RON91, RON95, RON 98, etc), price and location/convenience will be the key criteria when buying fuel.
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That is a question but am unsure if there is an answer. Unless transport and storage is very brand dependent you might have to go to a finer level of discrimination. Constant testing would be a big program.
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No need for constant testing, snapshot test was mentioned, with maybe periodic further testing, maybe every other year, to compare to the baseline.
I go back to, incredibly, testing for butter, or even mattresses, or baby prams, or portable hard disks. Experts at Choice themselves set a baseline and qualities that are important to consumers, test and evaluate against good criteria, publish that, then test again in a couple of years, let’s say. Respectable process.
Or should all of us consumers and those who think about consumers’ needs, like this community, just go along with the norm of everything is the same with fuel, don’t concern yourself, just accept it.
Back to baby’s prams, yes, lots of government regulations to set minimum standards, but still lots of prams fall short of being basically safe, and Choice finds those and publish the results. Minimum isn’t best, or even better, or in some cases even acceptable.
OK, so the testing program finds some fuel outlets that sell 91 octane and it turns out to be 85, or 95. Do we just attribute that to poor or great transport and storage, or something else. Do I now try to find the nearest refinery (tough to do) or the nearest port for a ship carrying refined product (again tough to organise) and try to buy immediately from those points to minimise transport and storage issues? No.
If you do it like that then the comparison to butter or prams is not valid as these are products that, in general, are not subject to variation in quality due to being stored in a dirty tank that has a layer of sludge at the bottom (or not). Nor are they subject to “shandying”, they arrive at the supermarket and your basket pretty much as they left the factory.
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The Federal Government is responsible for fuel quality in Australia . They have a team of inspectors who can turn up at any time and take samples of fuel for testing at service stations . I know of 2 service stations who were closed down when the quality of the fuel did not match that of the fuel shown on the paperwork when it was delivered to the service station .
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And you think milk from small producers don’t have storage and transport issues that could impact on butter quality? Yes, government inspectors do their job, and with no personal evidence, like with petrol/diesel, but the inspectors are only setting minimum expectations, not “better quality” potentials.
(Why do I feel like I am against the community here? Just trying to see if there is a way for the Choice world to advise consumers of brands that produce better product?)
Of course they do but overall if you want to test Lurpak the block you get at your supermarket will be very much the same as at mine, Choice doesn’t sample from thousands of supermarkets to test butter because the quality is not that variable. What you get out of the nozzle that purports to be unleaded 91 RON at any given service station is probably not the same as the rest and in some cases not what left the refinery. It’s a matter of degree.
I don’t think you are as we would all like to be assured of getting good fuel but I don’t think you understand the ramifications of the kind of testing you want to see done either. It would not be practical for a consumer group.
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It is not ‘against’, it is that the Community has provided you the best advice available and further posts targeting the same ask/question/goal will be no more productive than those previous.
The answer from the Community is ‘no’ if that is unclear. Perhaps @BrendanMays would like to add Choice’s formal response?
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Thank you for this, and the direct ‘no’ answer from you.
The question I think was if it was worthwhile to test ‘good, better, best’, or at least getting data, with 91 octane petrol and diesel to see which brand provided what. So that is one question, as in, is it worthwhile to do testing? A completely different question is if Choice could afford to do it. I will take it your no refers to both questions.
That’s fine, and as an older guy who doesn’t drive much, I thought the answer to the first question would be something for the community to think about and store away and maybe even recommend. The answer to the second question is outside our bounds, so we can’t answer it.
You offered earlier that you worked with Texaco Geophysical in the US back in the early 1980s. I am a professional petroleum engineer, upstream, like geophysics, and worked for Texaco in 1974 and 1975, then with Standard Oil of California (Chevron) starting in 1976, and through to 1987. Again, my range was all upstream work, drilling wells and getting oil and gas to the surface, so I was nowhere near refineries or downstream marketing. I worked with chromatography looking at various components of produced hydrocarbons (did this on exploratory wells in the Gorgon field) so know that, at least 40 years ago, it was possible to separate different hydrocarbon elements from a combined flow onsite. No question octane levels can be determined, probably with mobile equipment.
So the first question we have determined is that it is not valuable to consumers. The second it that Choice can’t afford it, regardless if it is worthwhile.
Sound about right?
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So how do you absolutely know that the packet of butter you get locally is the same as mine? Let’s face it, you don’t. And how do you know the quality across the board is not that variable? You don’t.
Does it make a difference? Probably not, we ourselves don’t buy much butter, but other people do, and Choice decided to spend money testing a bunch of butter, and I’m not unhappy they did, good consumer stuff.
Just read this again, and it seems I am getting a bit personal, which I should not, and I apologise. Sorry.
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The testing process Choice uses says to me that they accept this is probably so.
I expect the quality of the same nominal fuel fuel to vary with place and time and that says to me the numbers of samples required would be much greater than butter. Add to this the complexity of testing and I would expect the total cost to be much more than butter. If you don’t agree then let us just agree that we don’t.
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If I can sort of summarise:
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The Community appears to think that as long as the government is checking for minimum standards, Choice does not need to extend that scope to “good, better, best” because the quality of fuel is seen to be almost totally reliant on transport and storage, and all start with the same product out of the refinery or tanker.
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Doing any testing of fuels locally or nationwide is way too expensive or complicated for Choice to do, although we know of no protocol for the extent or complexity or cost of consumer testing being in place.
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Fuel brand usage should be left to individuals to work out what works best for their vehicles.
Sound right?
