Can We Control Gas Prices?

[Illini Trekker]

Had this forwarded to me, its is interesting and it might help?

Subject: Gas Prices Strategy

Subject: Gas Prices Strategy This definitely makes much more sense than not buying any gas for one day... not buying from these companies long term will have much more of an effect!! I'm willing to give it a go - can't hurt, might help!! GAS WAR - is ON!

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

Join the resistance! I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by summer and it might possibly 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 earlier! 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. &n bsp;Me too! It is currently $ 3.19 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 need 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 a re 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. Ho w? 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 2007, 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 bu yers. 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 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 pe ople 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.

[richfaa]

Won't help a bit. The only way to reduce prices is to reduce consumption. We consume more than 20 MILLION barrels of oil a DAY.Not buying from anymone or two company will not reduce consumption..we will just buy the fuel from someone else.We need to understand that our demand for energy is more than can be supplied, Reduce consumption and suppply will increase and price will decrease....nothing else will work...

[Cat320]

That article attributed to the Coke exec is not true...I checked it out on www.truthorfiction.com

[Illini Trekker]

Maybe if we where only to drink RC cola, which uses the same ingredients as Coca Cola, would Coca Cola lower its price to attract us back to its product even if it still pays the same to make its drink?

Rich consumption is not the problem. The problem is our ability to refine oil to make gas. Is there an honest effort to refine more fuel, there are lots of places to point our fingers (EPA, Big Oil, your government).

Bert I didn't check the forwarded article out, but it is an interesting theory.

[ArkieBug]

Way to go Cat320...
Rich is right, the only way is to reduce consumption. That has to be up to each individual on how they go about it. Even then, you are not going to have the effect that you would think. Just one aircraft carrier goes through over 1 million gal. of jet fuel each day during operations. Add that with all the other branch's and you will begain to understand we are just a drop in the bucket.

[Bill Frisbee]

This "gas price strategy" makes the rounds in Canada about once each year. The only difference is the names of the companies to be boycotted. Since the last go-round, the price of gasoline has increased by at least 10% ... currently equivalent to US$3.72/US gallon. Canada will definitely beat the US to $4.00/gallon gas. Yeah!!! We are Number 1!!!! LOL

[Delaine and Lindy]

The way to lower prices is more refineries, the last was build in 1976. We should be drilling in the Gulf off the coast of Cal. and Anwar in Alaska. We have no shortage of crude, we just can't refine what we have. An with the rest of the world using more oil, there will be higher prices. The new congress said they would reduce the price, well we are paying record prices today. GBY....


No oil company will build a refinery with all the rules and regs they have to go by. And why should they with all the profits they are making, don't it make you wonder???????

[eztraveler2000]

The oil companies will never build any more refineries in this country because that would create more supply of gas on the market thus lowering the price. Their whole plan is to create an articial shortage of supply, whenever some big disaster occurs,a terrorist attack,Iran or whatever lie that they can come up with,it drives up the price. If you remember the last few years the oil companies have used every possible excuse to rise prices like fires,preventative maintenance,leaks,switch over from winter to summer fuels, special blends for certain parts of the country, they have every excuse in the book. Also the government loves it because they collect more taxes as the price rises.The congress won't do anything to the oil companies because they have been in the oil companies pockets for along time. I was listening to Bill O'Reilly on Fox and he gave the points that I mentioned. The bottom line is we are screwed and we can't do anything about it. Maybe we should start voting out our politicians after one term in office if they don't start representing us and go after the oil companies as well as other ruthless industries, they get too powerful, greedy,rich and dishonest. I better not go on any further, it makes my blood boil.

[Wrenchtraveller]

The only thing we can do is try and use less fuel. Our daily driver is a Honda Accord and we try and use our truck only when we need it, like pulling the Montana.
I just hope the "green movement" does not start viewing RV people as fuel gluttons. We do not fly all over the globe in jets, we don't own a yacht that burns 100 gallons an hour, but we do love to travel in an RV and I hope we can do so for many years to come. I guess if fuel reaches a certain point, we will have to travel shorter distances but I plan on keeping my Montana for years to come.

I do agree with the earlier comments about BIG OIL using any excuse to raise prices and when Canada went Metric , the imperial quart was 20% larger than the litre, but guess what? the price of a litre of oil stayed exactly the same as the larger quart so Canadians took a 20% hike in oil prices with no protest from anyone. Also the litre is easier to keep raising the price a penny at a time. Right now gas is more money than milk and the cash cow oil companies keep getting fatter.

[richfaa]

It is a very complex subject of which most folks know little about and take no time to learn about. The truth is there if we would but seek it.. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12227
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/17/news...ion=2007041715

[OntMont]

I think the answer lies on the consumption side. This means not just our personal use, but all consumption. In the mean time the best we can do is to seek out and patronize those who do offer better prices. One reason I like to patronize Flying J.

[jretz]

Consumption is but one side of the equation. If we just curtail our consumption and lower demand, as in the past, we will see the oil industry lower production and supply maintaining the high price. With the barrel price of oil lower than its peek last year we still have rising gasoline prices. They reason stated by the oil companies is the same as last year and the year before, refinery problems and needed shutdown.

Attitudes today about gas prices are quite different than years ago. You hear the complaints about the price of gas but how many people have you seen still go out and by the new large SUV's. Consumer credit is up and many live by this credit. Which companies have the higher prices, sometime by 10 or 20 cents per gallon? Chevron is one. Why do people by from them at their higher prices? Credit! Gas credit cards use to be that you had to pay them off each month. In the last several years they became rotating accounts.

The answer to all this? Consumption is one part. But public awareness and pressure on the oil companies is another. More refineries would be good if built by small independent operators. With the large companies maintaining their own supply they can manipulate it.

A good book from the 1970's is the "Seven Sisters". It is about the 7 major oil companies, their rise to "power" and their manipulation of the industry. It gives a great insight into how they work and how they controlled the "oil". It was thought at that time that OPEC would change the operation and manipulation of these oils companies, but today they have taken a different approach, they manipulate through refineries.

One finally thought. Why do areas such as Oklahoma have lower gas prices and Los Angeles and California in general have some of the highest. I thought we were importing our oil. With the old oilfields in the US not producing and using imported oil and Major refineries still in operation in the Los Angeles area, shouldn't the prices be lower in Los Angeles (lower transportation from overseas, lower shipping from refinery to distributor, lower transportation from distributor to gas station), and higher in Oklahoma (higher transportation from refinery or from overseas supplier).

This subject has been a sore spot for me from the 1970's. I was a geology major in college in the 1970's. I was in the Los Angeles area and interfaced with many of the oil people then. I did a summer internship with Union Oil and was offered another internship at the Beaumont TX refinery. After talking to the Senior Geologist in Los Angeles for Shell oil (he gave me some personal in-site of why not to go to work for big oil) I go fed up with the industry. Oil companies PR machine work both sides, environmental concerns as well as concerns in exploration and refining and world politics are good news to them. We complain, we analysis, we write our government representatives, we boycott, we limit our consumption, and what ever else we can think of and still the prices go up. Open, uncontrolled, trade in oil as well as exploration, extraction, and refining is one possible answer. But then we get into environmental concerns, international concerns, and big oil profit margins.

This is my rant on the subject. Sorry to take up so much space and time. I see this as an ongoing problem and what we can do to make us feel better about it ie; boycotts, letter writing companies, lowered consummation etc. is good. Maybe by feeling our actions might affect the situation we can lower our stress a little.

[richfaa]

You can read "the seven sisters" on the link I provided above. Good post jertz.it is a complex subject. I have a very good friend who was a Shell oil Exec. He is a wealth of "accurate" information.Oil is a commodity and it is treated and traded like any other commodity, It just happens to be one that we rely on so heavily and can not do without. I like to make a attempt to understand what the problem is before I make any rash statements. Gold and Silver are commodities and are traded just like Oil..However I do not use much Gold or Silver so the price does not bother me much. Example for today'
http://money.cnn.com/data/commodities/

[Cat320]

quote:Originally posted by Delaine and Lindy

The way to lower prices is more refineries, the last was build in 1976. We should be drilling in the Gulf off the coast of Cal. and Anwar in Alaska. We have no shortage of crude, we just can't refine what we have. An with the rest of the world using more oil, there will be higher prices. The new congress said they would reduce the price, well we are paying record prices today. GBY....


No oil company will build a refinery with all the rules and regs they have to go by. And why should they with all the profits they are making, don't it make you wonder???????

More refineries is the answer, the problem is we can't drill in Alaska...the animal lovers say the moose and elk won't like it!!

[DonandBonnie]

Here is another situation to consider. The gasoline that comes from the pump is not necessarily refined by the company that is selling it. When was the last time that you saw or heard a gasoline commercial that toots the advantage of a particular brand. The gas that you buy from Mobil may have been bought on the open market from Texaco or the next gas you buy at Flying J could be Exxon. There is no way of knowing. Another thing that I heard on the radio last week is that in all of big oil, only 30% of their profits come from the US, the rest all come from overseas.

I agree with others. Price is determined solely on supply and demand. Increase production and refining capacity or reduce demand. Sad thing is that if the price of gas dropped to $1.50 at this moment, as has been suggested, the gas lines would be staggering. There is just not enough capacity to produce gasoline to maintain adequate supplies at the lower prices. Higher prices does force conservation, most of the time in ways that we don't like.

It was said above that no new refineries have been built in many years. The environmental regulators and NIMBY's make it impossible to build them. The same goes for new drilling. In the years since the last refinery was built, our population (legal and otherwise) has grown by many millions more people. We can conserve and reduce consumption all we want, but the increased population that needs gas will wipe out all that we conserve in short order. Alternative fuel or more oil is the only answer.

[Glenn and Lorraine]

OK Here's my game plan..
I ain't changing a da&% thing about our full timing lifestyle. This summer we will be in Missouri to Tennessee to Penna to NY and that out to Oregon after which we will be heading east along I 90 into Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota working our way to Goshen for the fall rally. After Goshen we will work our way down to Florida for the winter. About the only thing we will change is to TRY to eat in more often.

We can all sit here and Pi%$ and moan all we want about fuel prices and that's about all we will ever do. Most every tactic has been tried over the years and NONE have or ever will work. The likes of Exoon/Mobil, which by the way is now one company, will do whatever they da%$ well please and any attemp at boycotting will, to them, will be a joke.
As far as a boycot, E/M will be laughing all the way to the bank. As was already stated, you have NO IDEA what brand of fuel, gas or diesel, you are putting into your TV. They all share the same pipelines and when E/M puts a million gallons in the pipeline they take a million gallons of fuel out BUT that million could be Texaco, Hess or what ever other brand.

I personally have a lot more important things to worry about such as do we have steak or hot dogs tonight? Will we stop at the next CG for the night or drive on another 50 miles? We have enough things in our life to worry about and worrying about the price of fuel just does not fit into our lifestyle.

In a nut shell, Iffn ya wanna be an RVer and you wanna travel the country than ya gotta pay the price otherwise sell it or park it and just stay home.

[skypilot]

Glenn - hear ya loud and clear. Unfortunately, there are many who have to worry about it -- not in the full-timing mode yet and living pretty much paycheck to paycheck. We (I'm still one of the daily grind variety but luckily not in the paycheck to paycheck mode any longer) save up during the year to use our units and take a vacation; or we are saving up to do the full-time thing. Either way, these high prices are cutting into our budgets. Something has to give -- wages are not going up; I doubt if your retirement check (or checks) are being adjusted fast enough to cover the 40 plus percent increase in gas prices this month alone (I work for a state educational institution and it looks like we will get a 2 percent raise for this next year -- better than nothing but doesn't even match inflation much less fuel increases alone). SO, if we decide to travel, we must make a decision to cut out spending on something else. It is apparent that the American public is doing that -- earnings reports from WalMart, Sears, JC Penneys, and other non-petroleum industries were markedly down as reported late last month and earlier this month. I was watching a show on CNN the other night and the economist being interviewed said he and his collegiate collegues figured $3.25 to $3.50 and we'd start seeing even higher cutbacks on earnings. On the other hand, my Brother-In-Law is attending a National Jailers Association meeting that started this weekend and he says he read a report that they expect shop-lifting and other 'petty' thefts from stores to triple during this summer over last year. Why - per the report -- people will have to make a decision between purchasing fuel to get to and from work, or clothing themselves and their families.

Off my soap box -- it is a problem that we all will deal with in our individual ways. Peace to everyone out there and clear skys and favorable winds be yours to enjoy.

[texdeano]

The little guy's that for years helped to keep prices in check have all been sucked up by the big guy's and no there is no competition.The refineries do not run at full charge rates anymore as we did in the past.Our government should have never allowed this to happen again as it was this way years ago and they split them up.More refineries built by the same companies would make very little difference.

[richfaa]

Unfortunately we are not as prosperous as many of our fellow MOC'er who are not affected by the high cost of energy. We are both retired and we both have very good pensions.We are however still on a fixed income, COL increases only.We have only so much money to spend each month and must stay within that budget. The more we spend for energy and items that are affected by higher energy cost the less we can spend on other things.

[skypilot]

Rich - now why can't I be less verbose and say it as succinctly as you did!!