Britain’s petrol retailers today announced a new joint initiative designed to make buying fuel ‘as confusing as possible’
The consortium of petrol companies has joined forces to create a new naming hierarchy for fuels, allied to a revised colour coding system which they promise ‘makes no sense whatsoever’.
‘The number of people standing at pumps looking a bit confused has been dropping recently,’ explained a spokesman for Fuel United & Unified Understanding UK. ‘As retailers, we realised that only by acting together could we do something to ensure the experience of filling up with fuel is a needlessly baffling ordeal.’
Under the new system, to be rolled out over the next few months, Shell will colour all of its normal unleaded pumps yellow and its premium unleaded blue, in league with Esso who will do the exact opposite. ‘This tallies perfectly with our regular unleaded pumps,’ said a Texaco spokesman. ‘Which are red. Unlike our diesel pumps, which are blue. Except the premium diesel. Which is yellow.’
The names given to fuel have also received attention as BP immediately renamed its 97RON unleaded ‘Ultratron’, thereby bringing this fuel into line with the name Gulf will give to its regular diesel. This is designed to complement their premium petrol which from now on will be called Superdiesel and will be dispensed from the white pump familiar to anyone who has bought LPG from Tesco.
‘By working together as Fuel United & Unified Understanding UK we will change buying fuel forever,’ a spokesman crowed. ‘We hope that from now on, whenever someone buys fuel in this country they will say to themselves, ‘Oh for FUUUUK’s sake’.’
