BlackAcTSX

I was reading that other thread which was talking about when gas prices reach $4.00 and it reminded me of an email that was forwarded to me which proposed a solution to the gas problem that I think could work. I think everyone should read this and then copy it and email it to everyone they know.

Here it is:


Proposed SOLUTION to bring down the cost of GAS ... A GAS WAR - an idea that
WILL work!

This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of
his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. It's worth your
consideration.

Join the res istance! I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by next
summer and it might go higher! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to
take some intelligent, united action. Phillip
Hollsworth offered this good idea.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign
that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that
because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy
gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.
Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline
priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is
currently $2.79 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and
the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas
is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we nee d to take aggressive action to teach them that
BUYERS control the marketplace..... not sellers. With the price of gasoline
going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are
going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook
by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN
have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea:
For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest
companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any
gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If
they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil
gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp o ut at this point ...
keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach
millions of people.

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us sends it to at least ten
more (30 x 10 =3D 300) .. and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10
=3D 3,000) . and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of
people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three
million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people
will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it.. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE !

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all! If you don't
understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to
10 people ... well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am,
so trust me on this one.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more
people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be
contacted within the next 8 days!


I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you?

Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please
pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY
LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

THIS CAN REALLY WORK. WHY NOT TRY IT?

CJams

I got this e-mail as well and it does seem to make some type of sense. I mean, they would have to put gas on sale to get rid of it or it will go bad at some point since it has a short shelf life. I might give it a try. As long as I don't have to use AM/PM. I wish I could blow up those stations. They don't take credit cards and charge an atm fee to use a debit card.

TacoBellSauce

i only fill shell or sunoco

Schizm

BP or Shell for me.

You might want to give this site a read before you post chain emails:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

basic economics ppl

LuvMyTSX

Yeah, that would work!!!!!!

You'd have to be fucking idiot to think that could work.

leftride

iTrader: (1)

i bet this actually works

BlackAcTSX

Why?
Not saying it would DEFINATELY work but what the hell. Any other ideas? If nothing else at least it fucks with them, they've been fucking us and no can do shit

Schizm

Wow, three curses to make a point!

ok how about: this would never work. Read that snopes explanation or take some economics classes. Don't want to you too much but seriously don't believe any emails that say "pass this on".

One alternate gas station has a higher demand they will have to raise their prices. Then their demand drops because everyone will go back to the lower priced Exxon or Mobile.

goddsmack

My opinion is unforunately it wouldn't work, why...because gas is not just being bought by the USA. China which is experiencing major growth, and other countries would get to buy more of the gas that is available. So it wouldn't hurt the OPEC companies really any bit.

Ellas9

I bet you a lot of business that Exxonmobil get are from contract fleets and airlines which have already committed to purchasing fuel in high quantities. Those customers probably account for about half of their business. The US should invest into Russia, Canada and the North Caribbean (yes, the Cuba area) to extract significant oil reserves. Or, get the hell out of Iraq and invade Venezuela!

I have a good idea too.....drive more conservatively (i.e 95kmh on the highway, smooth acceleration and top gear cruising in the city) and you'll save upto 25% and you might actually survive your commute (that's a bonus!).

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

This is about as old as the internet...

Won't do shit...

randomthought

As far as I know, oil prices are up due to the demand from China's growth as well as the changeover to the summer formula. This changeover causes a slight drop in the quantity of available fuel, so prices go up more. Most of this is from my economics professor.

jfbradley

Did anyone actually go to this link and read this? Stop arguing about it and just follow Schizm's advice and read this link. You really would have to be pretty naive to believe that something like this could work. I'm still going to go fill up where it is convenient as long as it isn't too overpriced (everything usually is within a penny or two anyway).

Stoli

It won't work. Oil companies sell their extras on the market. Where do you think the small independant gas stations get their gas from?

daniel1113

First of all, anyone that gets economics information from a chain letter is an idiot.

That aside, this would never work. Why? Oil companies sell gasoline to each other all the time. If one company has an oversupply, such as Exxon if this scheme were ever implemented, it would simply sell its gasoline to the company which is experiencing a shortage. In the end, it makes no difference which company sells the gasoline to the consumer. The only way to "hurt" an oil company is to cut back on oil consumption, which brings me to point #2. Consumer vehicles use very little of the daily oil market supply. Even if everyone stopped using gasoline in their cars, it would barely make a dent in daily oil consumption.

jpt

Actually transportation is responsible for about two thirds of the oil consumed in the USA (and Canada) -- personal driving is responsible for the lion's share of that. This is not true for the rest of the world but America and Canada use about twice as much oil per capita as the rest of the developed nations and are responsible for about 25% of the world's total oil consumption. All this means that a major reduction in the amount of driving people do -- say 50% on average -- could make a significant dent in world oil consumption (8% or so). That's a HUGE loss in personal mobility though, and I would guess gas prices would have to skyrocket (well over $15 a gallon) to effect such a change in the short term. Long-term changes are a little different because a major, sustained increase in oil prices will eventually cause a trend towards smaller, more efficient cars (see for example the 1980s).

IlliNorge

Chain letters, online petitions and referendums just plain don't work. I think this is pretty much established. Yet some of the more intelligent people I know occasionally forward this garbage to me. My question is: Who is benefiting from these emails cluttering up America's inboxes? Is it ad companies trying to monitor the flow of e-traffic???

As for high gas prices--that's just capitalism in action, folks.

narci

Bill gates will give you a million dollars from Nigeria!!!!!

paranode

It will not work because the oil companies are not price gouging. The price of gas goes up when the oil company has to pay more for crude oil. They don't control the price of crude oil.

STL

peter_bigblock

Do the math, gasoline is priced lower than bottled water. Of course oil companies are making huge profits -- the demand for their product has increased dramatically as a number of forces collide, and increasing supply, with oil-production and gasoline refining at or near capacity worldwide, doesn't happen in the short term. So, price rations demand and also accommodates uncertainty -- about Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, China, etc. In the interim, oil companies are cracking oil at huge margins -- the board crack margins are $15-$18/bbl and you can bet that most oil companies aren't paying spot prices for their oil and are getting spot prices for their gasoline.

You can also bet that no oil company is holding back refinery capacity with those margins. We've put ourselves into this box by living in suburbs and exurbs, driving inefficient vehicles with single occupants, avoiding investment in mass transit, erecting high environmental barriers to new refinery capacity, and leaving the geopolitics of oil to oilmen and their politicians. (This in addition to God's apparent sense of humor in putting 80% of the world's oil under the sands of history's most instable area.) So, in the short term, oil prices and the prices of the products made from oil will find the level that balances supply and demand for both the futures contracts and for the physical product.

Futures prices -- the prices you hear when you hear that oil "topped $75 today" -- are also being driven up by you. Yes, you. Your pension funds and 401(k) funds are, more and more, diversifying into hedge funds and index funds that buy baskets of commodity futures. Most of those baskets are weighted -- sometimes up to 70% -- to crude oil, unleaded gas, heating oil, and nat gas futures. That influx of $10's of billions of new speculative money, almost exclusively on the buy side, has helped drive prices up in a market environment where sellers are few and far between.

These types of markets, though, always correct. Witness the NASDAQ and the internet bubble. Oil will likely hit $50 before it hits $100/bbl and gasoline futures will drop back, too, and with them retail gasoline prices. In the short term, commodity prices can be volatile, especially in a market whose supply-side is under tremendous strain and unpredictability and whose demand side is inelastic and expanding. In the long term, supply and demand always win out, and there's no cure for high prices like high prices.

In the long-long term, the market will continue to seek an equilibrium in which 5% of the participants do not continue to consume 25% of a commodity. That will work to our detriment, all the moreso if we continue to act only in the moment, when remedies are 100 times worse than those that benefit from forethought and time.

IlliNorge

Very well said. Interesting that 401k workers are profiting in a long-term sort of way by investing in part in lucrative commodities today.

narci

I hate that bottle water analogy because I probably use more gas then I drink water.

Plus..not fillin gup will hurt the innocent owners of gas stations that barely make anything from reselling gas.

peter_bigblock

You made my point. You use a lot more gasoline than you do bottled water, and yet the price of bottled water is about 3 times the price of gasoline. The bottled water analogy makes the point that any commodity is priced at exactly the confluence of supply and demand. People will pay about $8/gal. for bottled water, the equivalent of which comes out of your tap for about $3 per 1,000 gal. Yet they act as though the U.S. constitution establishes an inalienable right for gasoline to be a certain price.

The market worked in the late-90's when gasoline was under $1/gallon, oil was $12/bbl, and oil companies bled money (and didn't invest in drilling or refining) and their stocks got killed. The same market works today. If you really think gasoline is too high priced, you should buy less. Of course, the answer to that is that you won't (or, as most people put it, you "can't"). Ask yourself, who put you in that box?

Alin10123

actually, on AOL today there was an article that popped up that people in texas were boycotting mobil and exxon gas stations.

LuvMyTSX

It pisses me off how everyone criticizes and picks on ExxonMobil just because of their reported earnings, yet how many oil companies are there? EM does A LOT more than just produce gasoline. They also make polymers, plastics, and many more things that figure into their product line and profits.

Funny that in Europe, Shell and BP are the bad guys. Every area has its own "bad guy."