OFF THE Beaten Track
JESSADA TANDHASETTI
How dependent are Thai people on LPG? Well, you all would have witnessed that several days ago there was an "artificial shortage" of LPG. I say "artificial" because I believe it was the result of market manipulation when it was hoped that the government would allow the price to float.
Fuel demand and supply problem will stay with Thai motorists for a long time. If it is global problem then we would all be able to come to terms with it. But if it stems from fraudulent politicians, it would more than double our pain and anger.
What can you hope for from politicians whose only interests are those of their own association? They who never even bothered to educate themselves on the standard measurements in fuel trading such as in unit mass and volume.
I have read and heard of several biggies including the prime minister, energy minister and other high ranking energy officials speak of LPG being sold to taxi drivers and other motorists at B11 a kilogramme and CNG at some B9 per litre.
Let's get certain things straight. LPG is sold to end consumers in its liquid state and so its density is pretty much constant. It is therefore a common practice to trade LPG using price per mass sold. Price per volume can also used as in per litre or gallon according to preferences in each locality.
Motorists are used to buying their fuel by the volume, so to buy LPG by the mass is somewhat awkward to grasp. So automotive LPG in Thailand is sold by the volume in litres.
But to buy LPG for household cooking by the litre would make it difficult for buyers to verify the true amount of fuel bought. Hence household LPG is sold by mass, in kilogrammes, so buyers can easily check for themselves how much gas is in the tank simply by subtracting the weight when empty from when it was bought from the retailer.
Today's automotive LPG pump price is over B11 per litre while the household LPG costs around B18-20 a kilogramme (depending on how honest the retailer is).
When converted to same measurement unit - either litre or kilogramme - then automotive LPG is actually only slightly higher than its household equivalent. Thus, there is no real gain to attempt to fill up your car's gas tank with household LPG.
But in the real world, I see people living upcountry with their empty household gas tanks go to buy the gas from automotive LPG stations thinking they're getting a much better deal.
By the way, filling up household LPG tanks with automotive one is totally against the law, so the illegal trading is usually done in the wee hours. What they do not realise is that household and automotive LPG are sold under different unit of fuel. Per litre price of automotive LPG is always much lower than the per kilogramme cost of the household equivalent.
So the unquestioning consumers go home happy mistakenly believing they bought the fuel cheaper than everybody else, while the retailers are even happier bagging more cash. The truth is that the buyer actually pays more for the gas.
You see, one kilogramme of LPG is equivalent to about two litres in volume. Household LPG costs B19 a kilo, so this is roughly equal to B10 a litre. Automotive LPG retails for B11.45 per litre - so which is dearer?
And we have not even taken into account the trouble and fuel of riding a motorbike carrying the bloody household gas tank from home to the LPG station in the dark. Nor the fabrication of an adaptor to allow the household gas tank to be filled up at the service station.
So long as the idiotic government tries to force motorists to take up CNG (that so-called NGV or natural gas for vehicle) by raising the prices of automotive LPG, then I can assure you that a catastrophe of national proportion will follow. Water always flows downward. And you think LPG car users would not figure a way to get their cars filled with cheaper household LPG?
I can draw out for you the future of automotive LPG in Thailand as follows: Professional and amateur retailers will come up with easy to fit kits to convey household LPG into the car's gas tanks. Such a kit would include flexible tube adaptor to connect between the two tanks and a mobile, rotating tank holder.
Fancy ones would have the cost option of a gas tank warmer to speed up fill-ups. There will record high smuggling outside household LPG plants for everyone will want to sell cheaper household LPG to car users in the black market.
And you can eat my words that behind such illegal trading there will always be corrupt politicians.
- NEXT COLUMN: problems facing CNG users.
Jessada Tandhasetti is former department head of automotive engineering studies at Rangsit University and is currently a technical consultant. He holds a master's degree in automotive engineering from Technical University, Berlin, Germany.
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