Illegal to use red diesel for boat propulsion

[David Mack]

7 hours ago, magnetman said:

Boats can use red diesel as fuel. Seems pretty clear ?

Yes, but not all sellers of red diesel can sell it to boaters.

[jonathanA]

2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

It is worth you sepnding some time researching ...........

 

Agricultural use (some) are OK with Red - but if for example you are carting sugar beet to the factory on the road it is no longer agricultral but 'freight'.

Golf course can use Red

Industry and construction cannot use Red

Generators cannot use Red

If you are using your tractor to clear snow, or cut roadside verges you can use Red.

 

There are all sorts of rules and minutia (if you are doing X then you must do Y) that need to be understood.

 

Check on the .Gov website and read it your self rather than 2nd hand interpration from some weirdo on the internet.

 

Check when rebated fuel can be used - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 

There are 100s of pages of 'small print' in addition to the above link.

Sailing, boating and marine transport

You can use rebated fuel in all types of boat, except for private pleasure craft in Northern Ireland. This includes in their engines and in other machines and appliances permanently on the boat.

You cannot put rebated fuel into the fuel supply of the engine of a private pleasure craft in Northern Ireland.

If you buy rebated fuel for private pleasure craft in Great Britain, you will be required to pay the additional duty on the proportion of the fuel you will use to propel the craft.

 

 

Thanks Alan

 

Indeed it is ....I kind of thought  it would all be very simple and clear but of course I did not allow for the civil service mentality...  

 

RISHI has to pay for all that furlough and other covid costs somehow ...

[jonathanA]

2 hours ago, Loddon said:

After 1/4/22 it will not be legal to use red in plant. My local plant hire will be charging to clean plant fuel tanks and dispose of the fuel  if plant is returned with red in the tanks they are going White only.

 

Seems pretty extreme to me and probably unworkable... no mate I've only used white it must have had red in before.... prove it didn't...  I'd be looking for a different hire company 

 

To Alan's point if it becomes uneconomic to stock and sell red then its only a matter of time when it will be all but impossibe to source it anyway...

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

14 minutes ago, jonathanA said:

 

 

To Alan's point if it becomes uneconomic to stock and sell red then its only a matter of time when it will be all but impossibe to source it anyway...

Make your own, add some cochineal!

👍

[Ray T]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Exactly - all these folks are getting their knickers in a knot when as far as GB is concerned it is business as usual.

 

The problem will come in the near future now that the largest used of Red can no longer use it, the volume of red production will be reduced, there will be supply issues, let alone pricing problems.

 

A private garage near us has stopped selling red as the owner says the lack of turnover will not make it worth his while to continue.

[ditchcrawler]

9 hours ago, BEngo said:

Unless the pumps are in Northern Ireland.

 

N

I read that a boat club was told they would need to buy white and red so they could put 40% white and 60% red into the same boat tank. Some people have funny ideas

[zenataomm]

4 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

I remember reading that, during WWII, spivs found that the carbon filters of gas masks were very effective removers of the dye from fuel. 

Red diesel has only been around in the form it is today since 1961 when the red dye chemical markers were added to it, leading it to be known as red diesel.

[magnetman]

4 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Indeed thats why I suggested he reads the ACTUAL RULES rather than a biased interpretation saying 'yes you can'.

 

There are lots of "if this is being done then this must be used" when you would have thought it was clear-cut.

All the fuel boats I have come across just put red diesel into your tank and charge their current price for red diesel. A distinct lack of fannying around with splits and percentages. 

 

Is there something special about selling fuels from a boat rather than a marina? Or is the truth that it is up to the customer and not the supplier to make their usage declaration. The supplier can sell you red at whatever markup he chooses. 

 

It seems to me that as I mentioned earlier one can use red diesel on one's boat and just get on with it. As one does now.

 

 

[MtB]

23 minutes ago, magnetman said:

All the fuel boats I have come across just put red diesel into your tank and charge their current price for red diesel. A distinct lack of fannying around with splits and percentages. 

 

Is there something special about selling fuels from a boat rather than a marina? Or is the truth that it is up to the customer and not the supplier to make their usage declaration. The supplier can sell you red at whatever markup he chooses. 

 

It seems to me that as I mentioned earlier one can use red diesel on one's boat and just get on with it. As one does now.

 

 

 

I have to say I've noticed the same, leading me to wonder too if there is something different about selling from a boat. Maybe fuel boats cannot register as oil retailers, not having a postcode or fixed site from which they sell.

 

I bought some diesel recently from Fenny Compton marina, where they clearly state they have no expectations regarding split. They will sell it to you at whatever split you choose to declare, anything from 0% to 100% is fine.

 

(99p a litre for 100% domestic BTW. Dunno if that was cheap or expensive!)

 

 

[Lady M]

My fuel boat accepts a declaration.  Remember it is up to the purchaser to declare the propulsion percentage.  As working out the right price for a split declaration and then dealing with the duty collected is fiddly extra work, you can see why some sellers may not offer to do it.  Some boaters probably still don't understand the arrangement.  It also seems likely that a fair number of coal boat customers may not use much fuel for propulsion, especially in the winter.    99p a litre for domestic must have been delivered before the war started.  

[TheBiscuits]

5 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

The problem will come in the near future now that the largest used of Red can no longer use it, the volume of red production will be reduced, there will be supply issues, let alone pricing problems.

 

They don't produce separate red diesel Alan.

 

It's an additive pack added to white diesel when it's loaded in the tanker.

[Alan de Enfield]

8 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

They don't produce separate red diesel Alan.

 

It's an additive pack added to white diesel when it's loaded in the tanker.

 

I know that, the point is that stockholders, marinas, fuel boats, garages, fuel dealers will not be holding much stock because of reduced demand, places will still need to have sufficient demand to justify filling up a tanker (or one of its chambers) with 'gas-oil'. We have 1000 litre deliveries but the chambers are many, many 1000s of litres so they need other customers to drop off to. They will not send a tanker out with 1000 litres on board, or, if they do you will be paying a large premium.

 

Delivery was normally a 3-day window, now it's 'hopefully, sometime in the next 2 weeks'

Prices are already quoted as being "place your order today and we will give you the price per litre on the morning of the delivery"

 

Much of this is no doubt down to Putin, but once things become the norm they never return - tie this in with the worlds intent to get rid of petrol & diesel in the next 10-20-30 years and supply will become more and more of an issue.

 

Anything that is a small varience to the norm will take second place.

 

We could be self-sufficient in petrol but I think something like 30% of our diesel comes from Russia - will our trade with Russia ever be the same again ?

[Lady M]

To date, it has been possible to order traditional gas oil from some suppliers.

[MtB]

2 hours ago, Lady C said:

To date, it has been possible to order traditional gas oil from some suppliers.

 

Is this different from red diesel then? 

 

In what way?

[LadyG]

3 hours ago, MtB said:

 

Is this different from red diesel then? 

 

In what way?

I bought about 60l from a garage, marked gas oil, looked and behaved like diesel, I declared it was for heating. There was no options, it just asked for usage. 

Edited March 28, 2022 by LadyG

[Momac]

22 hours ago, dmr said:

. Going to the petrol station with Jerry cans and buying red diesel that you intend to use for propulsion is a bit of a grey area???? 

Not at all a grey area.

Nothing new here 

How the fuel is used cannot possibly be  the retailers liability. 

[Lady M]

Modern red diesel contains biofuel which can promote diesel bug and doesn't keep for years unlike traditional gas oil.

[Alan de Enfield]

The FAME free Gas oil is getting harder and harder to find, up to a couple of years ago you just specified FAME Free to the supplier and thats what you got, then some suppliers said 'its no longer available', but some always 'found it', but now it has become "we will try and source it for you but no guarantees as we can only load what is available at the docks/refinery -  for us they normally load at Immingham.

 

The Farming community had huge problems with the FAME diesel with machinery as it can often stand for long periods between seasons, it also attacked the rubbers used in pipes and pumps on older machinery.

FAME Free continued to be available way past the staged introduction of FAME diesels, but now seems very hard to get a source.

[magnetman]

At the end of the day it is a Good News story if this promotes more use of electric propulsion systems. 

 

Although I like the old BOLINDERS engines and similar I would not miss the noise of a modern diesel with a cheap silencer on it. 

 

Electric canal boats obviously a huge challenge but would be quite nice. 

 

I did see NB SPEY (Clayton's tar boat) the other day and the BOLINDERS was running happily on HVO which was interesting. 

 

 

 

 

[peterboat]

9 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I know that, the point is that stockholders, marinas, fuel boats, garages, fuel dealers will not be holding much stock because of reduced demand, places will still need to have sufficient demand to justify filling up a tanker (or one of its chambers) with 'gas-oil'. We have 1000 litre deliveries but the chambers are many, many 1000s of litres so they need other customers to drop off to. They will not send a tanker out with 1000 litres on board, or, if they do you will be paying a large premium.

 

Delivery was normally a 3-day window, now it's 'hopefully, sometime in the next 2 weeks'

Prices are already quoted as being "place your order today and we will give you the price per litre on the morning of the delivery"

 

Much of this is no doubt down to Putin, but once things become the norm they never return - tie this in with the worlds intent to get rid of petrol & diesel in the next 10-20-30 years and supply will become more and more of an issue.

 

Anything that is a small varience to the norm will take second place.

 

We could be self-sufficient in petrol but I think something like 30% of our diesel comes from Russia - will our trade with Russia ever be the same again ?

Russia is stopping production of diesel for exports have a Google 

[john.k]

Old diesel engines with swirl chamber heads run well on clean waste hydraulic oil,and also run OK on filtered waste diesel engine oil...........I used to have access to large quantities of used screw compressor oil,which was a turbine grade of hydraulic oil,and it was very cheap boating ...engine was a 1960s Caterpillar six,and there was no noticeable difference between diesel and oil...........In fact the old engines were designed to run on a much  more viscous diesel than whats sold now.............the stuff was brown ,and called #2 diesel,or #2 tractor fuel,and about 1/2 the price of white #1 diesel......(Diesel fuels went to #5 ,which was black and sticky and had to be steam heated to flow)

[Alan de Enfield]

7 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Russia is stopping production of diesel for exports have a Google 

 

Have you a link ?

 

All I can see is that the UK is banning the purchase of Russian Oil (including Diesel)

 

Russia exported 264,000,000 litresof Diesel from 1st to 6th March from the port of Primorsk alone (Reuters) but obviously things have changed in the last 3 weeks.

[dmr]

2 hours ago, MartynG said:

Not at all a grey area.

Nothing new here 

How the fuel is used cannot possibly be  the retailers liability. 

 

But sometimes it is, if you buy fuel canalside then most retailers have to ask how you intend to use the fuel and collect duty from you.

Try ordering a drum of diesel and the supplier will likely ask what the intended use is.

[peterboat]

48 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Have you a link ?

 

All I can see is that the UK is banning the purchase of Russian Oil (including Diesel)

 

Russia exported 264,000,000 litresof Diesel from 1st to 6th March from the port of Primorsk alone (Reuters) but obviously things have changed in the last 3 weeks.

This is all I can find now but it should help 

[peterboat]

54 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Have you a link ?

 

All I can see is that the UK is banning the purchase of Russian Oil (including Diesel)

 

Russia exported 264,000,000 litresof Diesel from 1st to 6th March from the port of Primorsk alone (Reuters) but obviously things have changed in the last 3 weeks.

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