Diesel consumption rose by 7.3 percent to 43.14 million liters per day, up from 40.19 million liters per day in July. This is the first month-on-month increase for diesel consumption in four months.
The increasing demand resulted in crude imports for August increasing by 12.4 percent to 852,000 barrels per day, up from 759,000 barrels in July.
The Energy Business Department gave a comparison that in July, with diesel prices at 42.4 baht per liter, diesel consumption went down 11.4 percent.
However, diesel prices went down to 34.37 baht per liter in August due to the excise tax cut and lower global oil prices, causing people to consume more petrol (TOC)
Economy 101. The peak prices in july gave a serious blow to consumption. Then the bozo Samak, sorry the ex-Prime Minister (the retired cook) decided to offer a huge tax-cut on diesel (for 6 months only) in order to boost his popularity… oil prices on world market started to go down too… therefore the thais were able to start again their oil orgy.
Congratulations. 
This is serious business, long term and wise policy…
You think US people are addicted to their cars ? You should look our thai friends… The fuel disease is probably worse in Thailand, because of the powerful “status booster” linked to the ownership of a car…
Those figures give us already an hint about the trade balance for august : it’s going to be bad, after poor performances in july. We should have the first officials datas about exports and imports on september 21 (september 30 for the details, with the Bank Of Thailand). We’ll see.
Anyway, back to oil. Here is an update of my chart, but with the datas until july only (source EPPO).
Imports :
No need to comment.
And another chart, with net imports (= imports minus exports). I remind you that Thailand produces and exports oil (and other oil products). In july for instance : 275 000 barrels per day.
Therefore, this amount needs to be deducted from the total imports, in order to assess the real financial burden.
Not to mention winter is coming and US hurricane bringing oil production to a halt…
TANSTAAFL.
Yep, but those factors don’t have any influence. Oil is falling, as fast as the… US banking sector.
The panic starts to run… everywhere.
Holly molly, I should give another name this this blog : worldcrisis.wordpress.com
Our thai friends have absolutly no idea, no clue, of what’s going on.
Wake up is going to be very painful. And I don’t even factorize in this equation… the thai politicial situation… we all know that the country is basically ungovernable. And for a long time.