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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2249 ..
MR OSBORNE
(continuing):This petrol is then pumped into a large aboveground storage tank at the refinery where it will cool, but it will not cool below Sydney air temperature.
If a delivery tanker leaves Sydney with petrol loaded at 20 degrees it will cool by a couple of degrees during the journey.
This cooling will marginally reduce the volume of fuel, but a large reduction will occur when it is transferred into the service station storage tanks in Canberra.
I have documents from one Canberra service station from the middle of June last year where a load of fuel left Sydney at 21.5 degrees and by the time it reached Canberra and was mixed with fuel underground it had lost 1.6 per cent of its volume.
This example is typical and cost the service station concerned around $500 for that particular load, or about 2 cents per litre.
Unfortunately Mr Speaker, that loss was then passed on to the motorist.
It has been estimated that across the course of a year the cost of this problem averages around 1 cent per litre.
Mr Speaker, as Members will also be aware Federal excise is paid on petroleum products by the oil companies. The excise is paid on the volume of product sold and is calculated at the time a road delivery tanker is loaded in Sydney. In order to compensate for the effect that temperature has on the volume of petrol for the purpose of calculating the excise, the oil companies are allowed to adjust the volume of the fuel to the volume the fuel would be if it was 15 degrees Celsius. This is done quite simply. As a tanker is being loaded the fuel travels through a device which measures it's temperature and adjusts the volume of the load according to a scientific formula. This process is referred to within the industry as 'temperature correction" or more accurately "temperature conversion". While the volume of the load is adjusted to suit the oil companies when paying excise, Mr Speaker, it is not used when the same fuel is sold at either a wholesale or retail level.
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