So after a jaunt to the Iles de Porquerolles yesterday the car was a little light on fuel - actually I think it was running on fumes - when I got to fill her up at the nearest cheapo petrol place this morning. To my great pleasure I filled up for about €0.15/litre less than the last time. In fact it about the cheapest it has been for a good few months - €1.159/litre which put the 50 odd litres I filled up with in the low €60s rather than the €70 plus I paid last time (an outrageous €1.31 or so a litre!).
So here I am about to post about how odd it was that none of the petrol stations near Hyères seemed to have petrol under €1.20 and here I am in the generally more expensive Alpes Maritimes getting my tank filled so cheap and I see the Instapundit putting my cheap petrol celebration in perspective:
DRIVING A HYBRID, I only fill up every couple of weeks, and when I filled up last night I was pleasantly surprised to be paying $2.50/gallon, which was much less than I paid last time. I thought it was good news, but it turns out it's all part of the insidious Big Oil conspiracy to lower prices.
UPDATE: Kathy Grim emails: "You may be really frustrated to know that you should have waited one more day to fill up. I filled up for $2.399 at Callahan and Central Ave Pike this morning."
By my calculations the Instapundit filled up at €0.52/litre at today's exchange rates and his correspondent Kathy filled up at a hair under the psychological €0.50/litre price. Sickening I call it - especially since I'm sure Americans think that petrol over $2/gallon is excessive and I've never ever bought petrol in France below €0.90, that is to say comfortably above $4/gallon.
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