Spamming a Gas Price War

acrouch · Post by **acrouch** » May 3rd, 2006, 2:09 pm

Join the resistance!!!!

I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action.

What follows makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last month. The oil companies just laughed because they knew we would buy gas the day before or the day after. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

We need to show that BUYERS control the marketplace..... not sellers. The only way we are going to see gas prices drop is if we hit oil companies in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How?
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 this year, 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 buyers.?It's really simple to do!

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us sends it to at least
ten more ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more, by the time the message reaches the sixth group , we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then THIRTY MILLION people will have been contacted!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. 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 30 MILLION people could be contacted within the next week.

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.

it is straightforward:
Do not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES to 1.50 or lower.

I've gotten this from a couple people now. It's a cute idea. Feel free to pass this along if it strikes you.

For a counterpoint check out this debunking of the email: http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

kbadr · Post by **kbadr** » May 3rd, 2006, 2:12 pm

I want the price of gas to go up. The sooner it goes up, the sooner we will be forced to stop suckling at the teat of dinosaurs-turned-fossil fuel.

Wesley · Post by **Wesley** » May 3rd, 2006, 2:48 pm

It's a cute idea with no basis in actual economics whatsoever.

valetoile · Post by **valetoile** » May 3rd, 2006, 8:21 pm

I'd like to reccomend biking or public transitting to work. Cheaper for you, healthier even. You don't need gas like you think you do.

arclight · Post by **arclight** » May 3rd, 2006, 9:06 pm

Wesley wrote:It's a cute idea with no basis in actual economics whatsoever.

Think about all the times you've passed a gas station at night when the tanker is making its delivery. Note there is no oil company logo on the tanker. That's because stations buy their gas from distributors (wholesalers) who in turn buy it from the refineries which are owned by the oil companies. So despite the feelgood enthusiasm of the original spammer, er, author, the only way to 'get through' to the oil companies is for a number of people & companies to drastically reduce their gas consumption, period.

Bike, bus, walk, carpool -- whatever -- just don't drive alone or unnecessarily. Redefine 'necessary.'

And if you're creative, figure out how to hack a Prius to charge off wall current. Why burn gas if you can charge the car overnight when power demand is low, especially if that power comes from the loud, bird-killing windmills of West Texas, the fossil-free units of the South Texas Project, or whatever decorative solar panels Austin Energy has deployed.

Or convert your car to natural gas, biodiesel, vegetable oil, or hydrogen. Hell, the Japanese ran their cars off charcoal in WWII while we were bombing the crap out of their cities with incendiaries. Lots of things burn and the Carnot cycle isn't exactly rocket science. Figure out how to make decent seals for a Stirling engine and ditch the whole notion of an internal combustion engine completely.

Lobby the city council to criminalize those stupid advertising trucks and scooters as unnecessary visual and environmental pollutants, a useless addition to traffic and a driving risk that the rest of us shouldn't need to bear. Pepper them with paintballs until they get the message...

Telecommute. Quit your job. Slack off.

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » May 3rd, 2006, 9:09 pm

valetoile wrote:I'd like to reccomend biking or public transitting to work. Cheaper for you, healthier even. You don't need gas like you think you do.

I would agree with you except that I've never had heatstroke driving 3 miles to school, and I've never had to wait 45 minutes for my car to show up.

On the other hand, nothing wrong with walking if you live close enough. It's one of the reasons I'm hoping to get a job in NYC.

valetoile · Post by **valetoile** » May 3rd, 2006, 11:30 pm

I've never had heatsroke biking nine miles to work, and I've never had to pay hundreds of dollars in car payments, insurance, reapirs, or gas to ride the bus.

UT students and former students: Your ID still works for free bus rides.

kbadr · Post by **kbadr** » May 3rd, 2006, 11:32 pm

Biking is great...between october and march. It gets a little...sweaty...during the traditional Texas Summer months of April-September. Still, I'm trying to figure out how I can continue biking and also not stink to high heaven when I arrave at my destination.

Wesley · Post by **Wesley** » May 4th, 2006, 12:03 am

the only way to 'get through' to the oil companies is for a number of people & companies to drastically reduce their gas consumption, period.

Yeah, that's what I meant. you have to reduce overall gas usage if you even hope to affect prices, not just reduce purchasing from one or two suppliers. Besides, suppliers sell gas to each other. If you don't buy Exxon's gas, Conoco or BP will and the worst that happens is that Exxon looses market share and shrinks, and some other company, still charging high, if not higher prices moves up the food chain. And at this point, even reducing overall demand won't have that large an effect until our refining capacity is up and the fears over middle east turmoil are at rest. That's what's spurring the price jumps.

$1.50 gas was when crude was two-and-a-half times as cheap as it is now and when our refining capacity was higher than it is now. You can't bully a few stations into low gas prices because they can't sell it for less than they buy it for and stay in business very long.

Brian Boyko · Post by **Brian Boyko** » May 4th, 2006, 1:25 am

valetoile wrote:I've never had heatsroke biking nine miles to work, and I've never had to pay hundreds of dollars in car payments, insurance, reapirs, or gas to ride the bus.

UT students and former students: Your ID still works for free bus rides.

You're also about 4/9ths my body weight and have years of experience. C'mon.

Although I'll seriously consider it - I'm selling the car off. Depends on where I end up, really. L.A.? Car. San Fran? No car, but no bike either. (They call it Lombard Street for a reason. Because it was named after a dude named Lombard. Also - San Francisco has a lot of hills.) NYC would be ideal, of course, possibly Boston or Chicago...