New Marine Diesel on the way

None of this makes any sense because the prime motive for dyeing the duty free diesel has been to prevent its use in road vehicles.
To date white diesel arrived at my distributors where red dye was added.
If there is no way to distinguish this from road diesel then it leaves the door wide open!
It also is likely to cause genuine mix ups at the distributors as without test equipment white is white is white!
If my local fuel oil distributor is unable to bulk supply me white marine diesel I shall continue to buy agricultural red grade.
 
I suspect it won't be a problem for 2 reasons;

1. This special yachty diesel will be as pricey as road diesel, or near enough to it for it to be not worth the effort.
2. Using high sulphur fuel in fancy new cars will banjo expensive catalytic bits and stuff like that.
 
MoodyNick said:
As there a a number of threads on the go (Premier and Soltron, red diesel in Belgium, etc) I hope this will cover off a number of concerns.

This is information I have been provided in the last week from WP, one of the biggest suppliers of diesel to marinas, at least in the Solent area.

A new Marine Diesel product will be launched nationally which will be standard sulphur (up to 1000ppm) and with no FAME. It will have no dye and therefore look the same as road diesel.

Heating and agricultural gasoil will continue to be dyed red, and will go to Ultra Low Sulphur, without any FAME (Bio) content.

The upside is that, after 2 years of machinations, the Govt have prevented sea-going boats being forced into the dangers of FAME in their tanks and engines. It also means that visitors from Europe, especially Belgium and Holland do not risk prosecution by having red fuel in their tanks; ditto for UK boats visiting Europe.

The downside is that the suppliers and Govt can now screw the boat owners, and hence marine industry, on price and taxes without affecting the poor farmers! This is IMHO, only time will tell.

The changeover to the new fuel has been postponed several times already to get all the refineries into line, and now any fuel from early December onwards will be the new Marine Diesel.

Premier Marinas are selling fuel with Soltron already added as a marketing tactic, This is unique to Premier and other marine diesel will NOT have any additives for the foreseeable future.
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I am not sure where exactly this information was obtained.
I have just spoken to my fuel oil distributor(under the umbrella of Texaco)
As I thought they began supplying two different types of diesel nearly a year ago-the low sulphur for agricultural machinery and plant and the other type for central heating and marine use.
Its all dyed Red as demanded by Customs and Excise
So I am at a loss to understand what WP are talking about.
Here in the Highlands the local suppliers of which there are I recall 5 are all up on latest info.as they supply acrossthe market to Marine users;agricultural;plant and heating.
As I stated earlier in this thread the prime reason for the dye was to distinguish the duty free from the white duty paid diesel.
 
penfold said:
1. This special yachty diesel will be as pricey as road diesel, or near enough to it for it to be not worth the effort.
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thats the whole idea,
in most places in central europe, white diesel in marina's is more expensive then on the roads,

ffiill said:
If my local fuel oil distributor is unable to bulk supply me white marine diesel I shall continue to buy agricultural red grade.
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in the transition period, going from red to white, or
as long as you don't have inspections, that you are not using red in a boat, like we have here in Belgium, or Holland, or France, ...
no problem to do so
 
ffiill said:
As I thought they began supplying two different types of diesel nearly a year ago-the low sulphur for agricultural machinery and plant and the other type for central heating and marine use.
Its all dyed Red as demanded by Customs and Excise
So I am at a loss to understand what WP are talking about.
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Obviously some regional differences - down here, red gasoil supplied for marine, agriculture and heating, has been "full-fat" sulphur until now.
 
MoodyNick said:
Obviously some regional differences - down here, red gasoil supplied for marine, agriculture and hea ting, has been "full-fat" sulphur until now.
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Yes it has been high sulphur-the old diesel standard until fairly recently UK wide.
Having thought about it what has happened is that as road vehicles now use the low sulphur with additive variety-biodiesel etc-something that first began about 5 years ago when it was promoted on the forcourt.
In the meantime the bogstandard high sulphur diesel which we all used for past 100 years in diesel engines has continued to be supplied dyed red to marine agricultural plant and heating market.
According to my supplier and I buy various bulk fuel supplys the split occured about a year ago but both varieties high and low sulphur are both dyed red to prevent their illegal road use.The dye is put into the tank of the road fuel tanker before it leaves the depot.
What I think has now happened in response to the fuel directive from Europe is to fit in with European demands Customs have done a deal with those suppliers who specialise in supplying marinas and waived the need to add red dye on the basis that it is highly unlikely that a passing motorist will fill up with the said white high sulphur diesel from the marinas fuel jetty!
I suspect anyway that white high sulphur diesel comes a little cheaper ex refinery than low sulphur.
This gives the supplier and marina cart blanche to charge silly prices.and Customs the opportunity to levy some high rate of duty!
For everyones info currently bought in bulk-1000 litres whether high or low sulphur costs about 70p a litre delivered to a storage tank .
 
Nick

Do you have any update on this new white stuff? Is your marina now getting it. I am trying to get our marina, Shotley, interested in it. A google search brings up this thread but nothing else, and WP website is silent on it.
 
What about additives for ultra low sulphur

If for one reason or another one finds oneself with ultra low sulphur red and thus potentially denying the engine of lubrication - is that when a drop of two stroke oil would be particularly useful? Some time back there were rave reviews of two stroke oil as an additive to diesel.
 
Thanks Nick, not so good. Shotley already supplies A2 grade marked gas oil. This is ultra low sulphur diesel but without the biodiesel content but red. Sounds like what you are describing then.
 
PaulWornell,

Regarding 2 stroke oil added to diesel.

I was one of several on a previous thread advocating using this. I put a little into the tank each time I fill up. I believe it protects against the possibility of receiving low sulphur diesel by providing lubrication to the pumps.

As soon as I started using it last season I noticed that the engine was running smoother - or was it all my imagination ????
 
theoldsalt said:
PaulWornell,

Regarding 2 stroke oil added to diesel.

I was one of several on a previous thread advocating using this. I put a little into the tank each time I fill up. I believe it protects against the possibility of receiving low sulphur diesel by providing lubrication to the pumps.

As soon as I started using it last season I noticed that the engine was running smoother - or was it all my imagination ????
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With 2 stroke oil the engine would certainly run smoother. I wonder, what about the additional carbon deposits? A two stroke engine is low compression and it is much, much simpler than a four stroke diesel, carbon deposits can flush out through the exhaust "lights" when they get detached from the piston and head. 2 stroke engines are also extremely simple to disassemble and clean. Not quite the same for a diesel engine that has high compression rates and delicate valves.
 
haydude said:
With 2 stroke oil the engine would certainly run smoother. I wonder, what about the additional carbon deposits? A two stroke engine is low compression and it is much, much simpler than a four stroke diesel, carbon deposits can flush out through the exhaust "lights" when they get detached from the piston and head. 2 stroke engines are also extremely simple to disassemble and clean. Not quite the same for a diesel engine that has high compression rates and delicate valves.
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I thought the whole point of modern 2/- was that it burned well (ie low soot) so for the very small amounts talked about in past threads (well under 1%) I doubt that carbon would be an issue in the lifetime of an average engine.
 
As I understand it after reading a couple of days ago the EU law that we signed up to, we have to levy the same level of tax on all transport fuels except for the stated exceptions such as commercial marine. So the "new" diesel might not have FAME in it but the fuel tax on it will be the same as the current diesel.

And the colour issue wont go away either. The essential problem is that the same pumps are used for commercial and private marine in lots of out of way places so the diesel has to be red.
 
Bosun Higgs said:
And the colour issue wont go away either. The essential problem is that the same pumps are used for commercial and private marine in lots of out of way places so the diesel has to be red.
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I'm slightly bemused by the question of colour and tax. Why cannot all maritime diesel be white and sold at taxed prices? Commercial users can then reclaim the tax paid in the same sort of way that they reclaim VAT input, or simply set the price of full tax fuel against revenues, in the same way that they currently do with tax-reduced fuel. It's really a question of accounting, rather than a battleline upon which the British mariner must stand or fall.
 
Twister_Ken said:
I'm slightly bemused by the question of colour and tax. Why cannot all maritime diesel be white and sold at taxed prices? Commercial users can then reclaim the tax paid in the same sort of way that they reclaim VAT input, or simply set the price of full tax fuel against revenues, in the same way that they currently do with tax-reduced fuel. It's really a question of accounting, rather than a battleline upon which the British mariner must stand or fall.
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You're right - that does make a lot more sense and probably would help HMRC control tax fraud.
 
Twister_Ken said:
I'm slightly bemused by the question of colour and tax. Why cannot all maritime diesel be white and sold at taxed prices? .
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It should be technically possible to have pumps where the dye was dispensed into the pump flow for red diesel and recorded by the pump as such with no dye for white diesel.

I suspect the current system is the simplest to administer and the cheapest to install and likely the least risky fraud wise since the volumes sold to us yotties must be way smaller than for the commercial fleet
 
I suspect the current system is the simplest to administer and the cheapest to install and likely the least risky fraud wise since the volumes sold to us yotties must be way smaller than for the commercial fleet[/QUOTE]

Yes agree with you and also helps small business' with cash flow. If it changes so that all maritime diesel is white and sold at taxed prices they may have to wait long periods of time to get their refunds of tax. Plus the admin costs that would fall on them to make the claims and the costs on HMRC to process such claims. The fishing fleet is already suffering financially, we should not do anything that makes it more difficult for them
 
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