BP News – June 2022

 In Uncategorized

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM THE BP BAMAGA TEAM

A few, but increasing number of dishonest or inconsiderate community members are spoiling things for the rest of the population.

This results in BP Bamaga management having to implement additional rules and systems to combat this anti-social behaviour.

‘Drive offs’ at BP

BP Bamaga has experienced a significant increase in the number of drive offs i.e. people fuelling up and driving off without paying.

This is theft and all it does is increase the price of fuel to cover the losses. If this continues, Bamaga Enterprises Ltd may introduce a system where customers have to pay before they are allowed to pump fuel.

This is an existing system in many places in Australia and overseas. These dishonest people think they are clever, but they are in fact cheating their community – their friends and family.

Debit/Credit Card declines

The BP is seeing many cases of customers fuelling up and attempting to pay by debit/credit card when they know their card will be declined due to lack of funds. This is also theft and causes a lot of extra work for staff to follow up and collect this money.

At times this is unintentional and some customers come back the same day to pay, but these occurrences are becoming too frequent for it to be accidental.

Parking at bowsers

Bowsers are for purchasing fuel and not a general parking area while customers buy groceries or café food. Customers not buying fuel must not park at the bowsers. New signs have now been installed to remind patrons of this. We do not want to refuse service to anyone but may have to if customers continue to disregard this instruction.

BP Bamaga Service Station

PETROL PRICES: IMPORTANT COMMUNITY NOTICE 

As you have likely noticed, fuel and gas prices have recently increased significantly, with some of the highest costs in Australia’s history, and there may be more pain to come.

Gas has increased by almost 30% for an 8.5kg bottle.

Sea Swift’s ships obviously use a lot of fuel, and the company works off a formula approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to calculate a fuel levy on shipments. In May this was around 38% and it cost around 30 cents per litre in freight to ship ULP to Bamaga, which includes a 25% dangerous goods levy that Sea Swift incurs.

There is also the cost to BEL to lease the ISO containers that carry the fuel, plus the cost of delivery from the terminal in Cairns to the Sea Swift vessel.

It should be noted that the Federal Government imposes a fuel excise of 44 cents per litre of fuel – almost a fifth of the bowser price, however on 29 March 2022 the Australian Government announced a 50% cut in fuel excise for 6 months.

It’s important to understand that the retail service stations are not responsible for the price increases in gas and fuel. BP Bamaga does not make a bigger profit when prices increase – in fact the opposite is true.

This has wider impacts than just the cost of fuel and gas at the BP Bamaga servo; the cost of food and products at the wholesale level in Cairns and elsewhere are flowing through to Bamaga because of the increased costs for trucking companies delivering to wholesalers.

Additionally, a huge backlog of shipping, especially for goods from China due to COVID-19, means less items are available, which means higher prices for products.

Unfortunately, we expect the cost of cooking and purchasing food at the Lodge’s restaurant and Tavern’s bistro will likely increase menu prices.

The same may be the case with alcohol prices at the Tavern. We will keep you updated as the situation develops.

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