Please read this..........it might save us all some cash!

[emmatmg]

I had this emailed to me this morning so thought I'd pass it on to you all too.

Worth a try I suppose!

We are going to hit close to 89p a litre by the summer.
Want petrol prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united
action.

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 at
77p -80p, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS
control the marketplace 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 whimp out on me 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!!! 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.
PLEASE
HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE

Action: It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy
your petrol at Shell, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons (75p)Jet etc. i.e.
boycott BP and Esso.

oh well that scuppered that plan then didn't it

And a few other comments: BP and Esso are most definitely not the same company, and could not possibly merge. The price of petrol is linked to the price of oil, which is very high at present due to "supply" problems. This is a global problem at present. Yes there will continue to be huge regional differences in the country, but there won't be many places that could get down to 69p/l at present without incurring huge losses. And by boycotting petrol stations you will be hurting the owner of the petrol station (who is often not part of the oil company, but just has a deal to supply).

And of course, don't forget that the largest reason that the price is so high here is due to the tax on fuel (hence why in the US petrol is so cheap). If you really want cheaper fuel then lobby Gordon Brown (bear in mind it did work before and the "escalator" was stopped). Boycotting petrol stations will just mean the owners go out of business and there is even less choice in the market place...

Action at refinery gates does work though - if you interrupt the supply to petrol stations then you will get the Government's attention pdq. Boycotting petrol stations doesn't work in this country.

I'm an Engineer for an E&I Contractor and BP pay my wages. I work at the BP Petrochemical Plant in Grangemouth.
About 80% of the workforce here are Sub-Contractors which means if there are blockages at the gates of the site as there was in 2000 it means the guys can't get to the workfaces.... as they are Sub-Contractors, they don't get paid unless they work.

To back up everything Lady Mucks comments on: BP and ESSO are most definitely still 2 separate companies. The 2 biggest petrol suppliers in the UK are BP and Shell. And it IS the price of oil that drives the price of petrol.... not the companies refining it. And it is most definitely the TAX that is the problem in this country.

Sorry EmmaTMG.... I think that may be a chain email that is circulating and may even have been started by a rival firm.

Toothache, I wouldn't worry. Google suggests that this email has been circulating since 2000. It's not having much impact so far...

I received this email only about half an hour ago from a friend - I shall ignore it then!

Well that's my good deed for the day gone up the swanny, thought I'd be saving the country £££££.

Darn, will have to think or another good deed

OF another good deed even

OPEC countries control supply to ensure prices raise so there is asteady supply of oil - however countries stock pile oil in case of diaster - could it be argued that the present oil price crisis is a way of maintaining / gaining support for the war in Iraq and for the proposed Israel solution to the Palistinan question- am I gettimg to cynical

DP has just told me that this particuar email has been doing the rounds for a couple of years.

It doesn't seeem to have made any difference to either Esso or BP

Yes, I had sent to me it a long time ago although I received it again this week, so someone seems to have resurrected it again.

I have recieved this e-mail a number of times now too. If only bringing the prices down were that simply

Remember last lot of protests as I got caught in a rolling road block on way home from work and it took me twice as long, and then ran out of petrol and had to miss 2 days of work. Spent 2 hours queing for petrol locally only for it to run out again as I got vaguely near the front.

The idea behind the thread doesn't apply to me; people who are tax-payers but overwhelmingly non-car users actually pay more for the environmental & health damages caused by petrol-using vehicles than we get back in any form of benefits (direct or indirect). The true social costs of petrol has been put at around £10/gallon, although I think that's outdated now, too.

All the petrol protests achieved last time was make me decide that British people were very selfish, with the paranoid way people went around stock-piling milk/nappies/whatever, and topping up their tanks every 1/2 mile or so.