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Linus Gump -> RE: Oil companies out to get us! (5/15/2007 9:31:25 AM)
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This "boycott gas day" is fundamentally flawed. I agree with the theory, but the mechanics aren't there. If everyone in America was to not buy gas for a single day, it wouldn't hurt the oil companies one bit because everyone would be getting their gas on the previous few days, or the few days after. The net result is the same amount of gas gets sold. In my area, and aside from the fully independent stations, the gas at the retail station is owned by the big company, and the station is owned by a private person or corporation. The store owner buys the gas and makes their money the moment the gas is sold to the consumer, and to stay competitive, they don't have a large markup in price. So, if you boycott an individual station or several stations, all you are hurting is the station owner, not big oil. Even if you were able to get the entire country to boycott a brand of gas, that would have no impact on the oil companies because they buy and sell gas to each other at the refinery level all the time. So the company that is being boycotted would still produce the same number of gallons they did when they had their own stores, but they would sell it to the other companies that are still selling gas to keep their supplies up due to higher demand at their stations. The end result here would be higher consumer prices because there are fewer places to buy from, and the oil companies would be making even more money. It is also impossible to convince everyone to boycott a certain brand, even for known political reasons, ala CITGO. The only way to have an impact would be to reduce consumption by a substantial rate in conjunction with the boycott gas day; but even then, there are enough other products that the oil companies can make with crude that the reduced sale of gas wouldn't be that big of an impact to their bottom line. The only other alternatives are to allow more drilling in places of known cheap oil, such as the Gulf of Mexico, off the West Coast, and Alaska, and to build more refineries, and continue to discover and develop renewable energy resources. In the end, it all boils down to supply and demand. As long as we demand a product, the producers will always sell it to us at the highest price possible.
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