When I'm overseas, as I am right now, one of the things I do is look at the price of fuel and look at the price of supermarket cooking oil.

About 5 years ago when I used to run an old Pug309 on Te$co's veggie oil, the oil was about 60p a litre and diesel was around 98p.

Today, I pay £1.22 a litre for diesel and about £1 a litre for cooking oil, to run my 1.7TD Astra.

But.....

At the moment, I'm out in Kuwait. Diesel goes for about 25p a litre. Cooking oil costs around KD2 for a 3 litre bottle of sunflower oil. As the highest value currency unit anywhere in the world, one Kuwaiti Dinar is approximately £2.23. So that makes sunflower oil about £1.50 a litre!!! Or six times the price of diesel.

I guess biofuels aren't a viable option out here! And (incidentally) you won't find cheaper 'vegetable oil' either, as in rapeseed oil. Everything is sold with both English and Arabic on the packaging, and from what I understand from talking to an Arabic colleague, the word 'rape' is the problem in these parts!! Rape is not grown round here, so they don't really have a common alternative word for it

The Canadians use the description 'canola' to avoid the obvious connotation.

Really no cheap olive oil?

Fair comment!! I didn't check olive oil prices, they are probably lower, but olive oil isn't very high on the list of suitable oils for use as fuels. It has a pretty low cetane rating as far as I recall. Of course, in the UK, olive oil if far more expensive than veg too!

Canola is an acronym for Canadian Oil Low Acid, and is used across north america and canada, even here too in some places for some reason...

The fella in Texas that sent my Tristar vacuum says that Canola is disgusting and has a chemical taste to it, but I keep telling him that's the preservatives they use over there (we've had veg oil that tastes chemically, and looking at the ingredients, it's no surprise, if it doesn't say "100% Pure Rape Seed Oil", don't buy it!!!), pure "canola" is much better and doesn't taste like superglue...

I use rapeseed for culinary reasons and know it tastes good - almost flavourless, in fact, and stable at high temps, and very low in cholesterol.

It's my choice.

Think Dtalbot on here is using it in his Suzuki GV too. He's coming up to see me for the tall ships in 'Pool in a few weeks. I shall ask him. He was paying 60p for veg oil (whatever he uses) from costco the last time I asked.

For cooking I only use olive oil. Much prefer it, and for the smaller number of people who use it it is reasonably eco friendly. I managed to buy bottles of Organic oil in France cheaper than other non organic variants from same company. Probably from a taste point of view might not be as good but for what I use it for its ideal. Obviously it would not be possible for everyone to switch to olive oil, as there isn't enough space to grow the olive trees.
I have issues with growing large fields to produce rape seed oil, because of the effect on local environment. Re-processing old veg oil was OK, but it has become too popular so price went up. (a certain TV program probably helped the popularity of old veg oil )

Why? Is it the size of the fields and lack of hedges you're thinking of or is there something else about oilseed rape?

I just got back from doing the shopping, and the cheapest rape seed oil was 1.90 euro per litre - that's about £1.58. The cheapest sunflower oil was 2.20 euro per litre, or £1.83. My diesel car won't be getting cooking oil any time soon. And you thought Kuwait was expensive!