A way to combat high petrol prices?

[Mooma]

My dh was sent this idea through a work colleague, and we forwarded it to some of our friends. I was reminded of it today, when I drove past our local Esso petrol station. A rep from 'Friends of the Earth' was standing next to the entrance, holding a placard which read: "Beep if you don't buy from Esso, the world's no 1 Global Warming villain". That got me wondering if the two could be connected. I am reproducing the text of the message dh received, and wondered what you all thought?

I hear 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.
Phillip Hollsworth, in the USA, 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 with us!
By now you're probably thinking petrol priced at about 77p a litre is super cheap. Me too! It is currently 79p - 83p for regular unleaded in some towns. 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.
How?
Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying petrol. But we CAN have an impact on petrol 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 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 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 about thirty 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. (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 email 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.
PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE AND
KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Mooma, it's a good idea but people's buying habits are determined by more than price, unfortunately. We have 2 petrol stations in our town - BP and Total. I pass the BP one far more often than I pass the other and I'm probably not the only one. And don't forget that most of the price of a litre of petrol here is tax.

If Americans paid for their petrol what we pay for ours, they might get cars with smaller engines and use less, and total world consumption (and depletion of the ozone layer?) would reduce by about half! Maybe Phillip Hollsworth could work on that.

So there was no message about how to drive your car in a way that would use fuel to it's best advantage?

Yes ks, so if we pay less for fuel, the govt's tax revenue also falls. This was one of the points made during the protests before, that it actually suits the govt to have high petrol prices, as tax income rises with fuel increases. There was a debate about whether the amount of tax levied tax should be capped. (I'm a bit hazy on the details, something to do with a decision made by John Major's govt. Can anyone expand?)
I assure you I am not banging the drum for this 'campaign'. It was after seeing the protester yesterday that I was reminded of the e-mail. I also take the points about US consumption, and over-use of cars. However, it strikes me as a very simple idea which could potentially have a real effect on prices.

The excise duty is a fixed pence per litre, regardless of the price of fuel - approx 50 pence per litre. As ks says, only the VAT element will change as the price changes.

Never mind, Tinker. Somebody has to do it.

Thanks for that Tinker and Janh. So presumably it's in the interests of the Oil companies to keep the price well above 50p per litre, or they wouldn't make much on the deal? Does the 50p per litre tax still stand if the price drops? (living in cloud cuckoo land here!)

Research seems to indicate that most people will not deviate from their usual journey by more than 3 miles in order to purchase cheap petrol (hence why motorway service stations can charge a premium). This is also why some petrol stations use "pricewatch" tactics looking at a fairly small radius.

However please bear in mind that ever since supermarkets have been selling petrol as cheaply as possible (as it is merely one line out of thousands), there hasn't been much money in the business of selling petrol in the UK: just look at all of the independents/smaller companies who have got out eg SAVE, Gulf etc. Likewise the oil companies have realised that they can get more profits out of their shops than they can out of petrol, hence why so many of the shops have been expanded/upgraded.

The main elements in setting the price is the oil price (effectively set by a cartel, OPEC) and the taxes set by the Government. Protest against the government (as before) is most likely to get action in the event that prices rise further. However they will probably still have to get the tax from somewhere....

How about converting your car to run on LPG (liquid petroleum gas)? The conversion costs around £1600 I think, and if you do a highish mileage per year or have a big engine car you can't afford not to! (According to that bloke on Fifth Gear the other night so it must be true). It's about half the price of normal petrol and is much less harmful to the environment, and there are lots of places to fill up.

The 50 pence per litre is set at each budget. So, should the world price of oil drop drastically, the excise duty would need to be amended. There is a very low-mark-up on petrol - about 2% - 4%, if I remember correctly

Oil companies are making a profit of 2p/litre max on petrol nowadays - slightly less than HM Gov!!