I recently repeated some analysis on the UK Petrol Prices. Slightly different from last time, instead of a large hand-written Excel workbook, I wrote a Python script that downloads and processes the data and creates charts from it. This also plugs into GitLab’s CI/CD functionality and, by making use of Hugo, creates a sort of dynamically updating page of charts. This is hosted over on my GitLab pages: https://thomasdstewart.gitlab.io/ukpetrolprice/
TL;DR - Buy Super Unleaded petrol! (or don’t)
Petrol prices are always on the rise. I decided to do some analysis on some raw data comparing the price of Brent crude oil and the price of petrol. The details of the analysis are on my site. I found out that there is a direct correlation between the price of Brent crude oil and the price of petrol at the pump excluding duty and VAT.
Petrol prices always seem to be in the news. This is mostly because it costs a lot of money and continues to increase all the time. Duty increases and VAT increases are both usually blamed. Also the price of crude oil is often blamed. This made me wonder if there was an actual correlation between crude oil and petrol at the pump. I did a little searching but did not find anything solid. In fact the graphs I did find were particularly bad, including one graph that plotted crude oil and petrol using different scales on the same graph. Some did produce vaguely interesting graphs but few provide their sources and none provided the raw source data.
