Petrol - not sure if this would work...

[quint]

Was sent this email yesterday. What do you think?

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it

We are hitting 123.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying 2.00 a ltr. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol 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 petrol. 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 it and join in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place
not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not
purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.

If they are not selling any petrol, 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 Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!!

Now, don't wimp out at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the
message reaches the sixth generation 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.(and not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt,
all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! Acting together we can make a difference . If this makes
sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso

I think it makes sense, and I already do that anyway..... i go to tesco, to get the clubcard points

Asda was 8p per litre of diesel cheaper than BP today, of course I went to Asda!

But would you follow a national boycott of a certain one or two stations in order to try and get the price reduced?

well, already do, really- don't have an Esso nearby, and avoid BP not only because of the price, but because I'm certain that my Switch card was cloned at our nearest one, though police weren't interested.

I just linked to this on the other thread - it's 4 years old, from when petrol was 80p a litre, and it didn't work then (but maybe it will now)([optimistic])

The thing is though that very little of the price you pay at the pump is made up of the actual cost of the fuel, and even then this is due to the global oil price. The vast majority of the price is tax - we should be lobbying the government to bring down fuel duty.

The other reason fuel prices are so high is because of speculators trying to make money through oil investments. Allegedly, if it was priced purely on a supply and demand basis, oil would be around $80 a barrel not the $130 that it's costing atm. Don't know what we do about that though!

It would also help if countries actually produced more oil - at the moment they're not producing it as quickly as they are able to because the shortage helps bump the cost up.

I really hope the government takes some action soon.

Ack not this again. There was a thread on this recently. It's bullshit, it won't work. There are only 3 petrol suppliers in the UK, that's it. People like tesco don't supply their own fuel you know.

This rubbish has been circulating for years.

at the UK education system

So what do you suggest LazyLine?

What do you mean, upwind?

This post dated Feb 08 from here

So the fuel comes from the same refineries as the big brands, and BP is among the suppliers to the refineries, but buying it from the supermarkets doesn't affect eg BP's retail profits (and it is the retailers who are profiteering atm). Quality may be poorer of course but that's another issue.

Any comments, LLPJ and upwind?

Yes, you are still missing the point.

If we all decide never to buy strawberries from Tesco do you think the price of strawberries in the other stores will go down?

Why would the other stores then decide to lowere the price to less then the cost of production + tax?

Like most chainmail the above is utter drivel and I am really dismayed that so many seem to have fallen for it.

They seem to be getting a little over-excited in their numbers too - the THREE HUNDRED MILLION they are shouting about is about five times the population of the UK...

strawberries are a bit different from oil products, though, upwind - as previously pointed out, there are not many suppliers of fuel, unlike strawberries which you can buy direct from PYO all over the country.

Diesel has been jumping up in 2p or 3p increments recently for no obvious reason except profiteering. Local to me there is a 7p difference in the price of diesel - if we all avoided the most expensive places so that their sales plummeted, do you really think they wouldn't notice or care?

Anyone that really thinks fuel will get cheaper is living in cloud cuckoo land. Fuel will only get more expensive as we become more reliant on other countries supplies, and as we head rapidly for peak oil. It is a sellers market - fuel is in short supply and we have to buy it therefore the suppliers set the price. Don't forward crap like this around - I have already ended up with this in my inbox twice over the last few years.

quint, I don't suggest anything. I don't think furl will get any cheaper and if you think it will you are kidding yourself. Whomever is making profits, it is still a finite resource and we cannot expect it to get cheaper. If you want to pay less, you need to get your car converted or look at other ways of travelling.

Wendy, that's just some random guy posting on a Lycos site....why would I have anything to say to that?

My father works in an oil refinery, and as been mentioned, tescos etc buy from the major oil refineries. My fathers place deals with all major supermarkets, and also the independent garage.

Whilst there is more demand than supply, of course prices are only going to go up!

yes I got this one too- did my usual thing with chain mail.

Delete.

hate 'em with a passion.

dh gets really irate with this email. IT WOULD NOT WORK. He works in the fuel additives industry. THERE ARE ONLY ABOUT 3 MAIN FUEL SUPPLIERS.

Far better idea is the one (can't remember where I read it) to pick one out of every 5 journeys you'd do in the car and do it by foot/public transport, if everyone did that it would put less pressure on petrol supplies and help improve transport links rather than aiming just for temporary relief from petrol price hikes.

Ideally, convince everyone who can afford to to buy an electric car, sorts the whole problem in one (seeing as we can eventually switch to wind/solar power ideally or nuclear power if not).

Or have your car converted to lpg, which is what I'm contemplating at the moment, as it costs £200 per month to get to work atm

Problem is lpg is that it's only available with oil extraction/petrol manufacture, the reason it's readily available now is purely that not as many people want/need it. The more people that switch to it, the quicker lpg supplies will run out too.

Problem with lpg that should read!

WendyWeber - google for "supply and demand" if you want to understand a little more about how market prices go up and down.