May 15th: Pass on Gas
 

I found the following interesting......

May 15th, 2007 Take a Pass on Gas

If everybody observed the boycott on Gas on May 15, 2007, it could drain more than 2 billion dollars from oil rich companies, hopefully making a strong enough statement to impact the over price for gas (The Herald News, May 5, 2007).
https://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/h...OTT_S1.article


Exxon Mobil profit increases

Published: Apr 27,2007 the associated press
NEW YORK -- Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said Thursday its net income grew 10 percent in the first quarter, as higher refining, marketing and chemical profit margins overcame lower crude oil and natural gas price...
https://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/h...XON_S1.article

So the theory is to not fill up on this one day of the year but you can go ahead and consume as much as you want to regardless. ;)

Note: This hasn't worked in 8 years, but what the heck, maybe this is the year. Has it had any effect but to a) create a lot of chain-mail traffic; and b) prove to the oil companies that we couldn't boycott gasoline if we wanted to? :confused:

The GS site does more to towards a real change in gas consumption than any superficial gimmick like that. :cool:

So they lose 2 billion on the 15th and make 4 billion on the 17th when everyone fills anyway??

Unless people conserve this will do nothing.

May 16
 

Future News:

Even though gas prices spike 20-cents in one day, a surge in fuel sales on May 16th show record profits for the oil companies...

Even if they did lose 2 billion dollar$, wouldn't they just up the price to compensate? :(

this is exactly it... a one day boycott doesn't change a thing, because the fuel will be purchased either before or after the boycott day...

now, get people to not drive their cars for a month and that will send a real message. I'd be willing to pick up my kid every day in my bicycle in order to make a statement.

here's What Snopes has to say....

Really... the best thing ever... May 16 -- gas goes up $1.00 based on supply demand.

This is not a boycott... A boycott is a halt on consumption by definition... not a temporary halt on purchase.

3. People think gas prices are high


As for the thinking... It's probably ignorance over anything else :thumbdown: The internet magnifies a lot of things... Unfortunately -- ignorance and stupidity too...

Not going to work. Best solution is you give me a ride to work and school, saving me $170 in fuel costs a month.

May 15: Destroy your car day. Now that would make a difference in gas prices. This whole boycott a day/brand doesn't change anything.

At 1000+ miles per tank I go for a month at a time between fuel purchases. I'm doing my bit, you slackers!

So what would happen? Station owners would see a drop in the day's receipts. Since they already bought the fuel from the suppliers, the suppliers couldn't give a ship less if you or I don't buy. They already have the day's percentage of the umpteen billion they earn a year.
Slurpee sales and state lottery receipts would be down, more day old hot dogs would merrily spin for another night. Twinkie's would lose about 1/5000th of their remaining shelf life. Other than that? Not a thing.
Let's stop human CO2 emissions! Everyone hold their breath for 20 seconds at noon GMT!

When I head out to Uni I will be ditching the car in favor of mass tranist and riding a bike. Gotta save all the money possible.

I might be tempted to pick up a honda spree, or another cheap scooter. Anyone know the gas mileage on those?

If it were a "don't drive day" and everyone participated, we would hurt them. Otherwise, we're just paying them the next day.

Yay! A scooter man. I would pick up an elite 80 over a spree for mileage, I myself am putting together a metropolitan.

But yeah, the spree should net around 80 MPG minimum and the elite 80 is lauded by honda for getting 115 in in house testing.

As others have pointed out, this can't (even in theory) work. And historically (on years when it's been tried) it didn't in fact do any good.

The reason this can't work, is that it does NOTHING to lower overall usage (which might effect "supply and demand"), and merely shifts the purchasing to a different day. And worse yet, because people didn't spread out usage out as evenly (because people were trying to skip buying of gas on this day), it actually has the potential to cause a slight spike in demand on days around the 15th (thereby actually causing prices to go up a little)!

IMHO this is a cute "feel good gimmick" only. The only positive things that this could possibly do (even if all goes well), is possibly get a few more people thinking about gas prices and/or send a "symbolic message" that people are "serious" about this issue. But more likely than not, the only message this will really send, is that people are stupid sheep that can't really do anything that matters. And the whole premise of this exercise (in futility), is so flawed, that (far from getting people to think) it has the significant danger of distracting from other things that might actually do some good (for example, techniques to get better gas mileage, and therefore have to use less overall gas)...

What are people thinking? :confused:

so why don't we start some spam of our own?

Maybe a "Stay home" day?

Anything that would help. Gas is getting very expensive and many are starting to feel the impact.

Any other thoughts?

If you wanna put some people out of business, have a month where you buy gas, but none of the stuff inside the store. That would totally mess with them.

Here's an idea, pick a country at random and figure out how much gas is there and next time you buy gas put the amount you save by living here in your bank account...
every time the price of gas goes up, it makes me smile, they are doing what a buissness is ment to do, making money, oil compenys are not running a charity, they didn't go in to the industry out of the kindness of their hearts, if they don't do everything they can to make a profit then they are violating the first law of buissness, "make as much money as possible for your share holders" if you don't do that as a buissness you have failed.

That's one theory about how business should work. But it's a theory that has some real problems for ethics, society, and even for the long term health of the company itself.

I agree that businesses aren't in it for charity (unless the business is a charity or a not-for-profit), but neither do they need to try to make the biggest profit at any costs. Just look at the history of Enron (even the technically legal stunts they did), to see where "profits at any cost" lead.

Business is (or at least should be) always a balancing act between making profits and keeping your ethics. And good ethics (not to mention avoiding "ticking off your customers") can also be good for the long term health of the company (just look at how well Google is doing, in part due to the fact that they apparently do draw a line as to how far they will go). But it's not just about "profits at any cost". Profits yes (and there is nothing wrong with a business making profits). But profits at any cost, no.

Word about this must out. Even my friend said something about it. Yeah it really wont work.


Why one-day gasoline 'boycott' won't work
https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18492185/

I got this in a bulletin in myspace. In reply, I posted why this wouldn't work. unfortunatly myspace deletes bulletins after 10 days, and I lost what I made.

What might work to lower fuel prices is if President Bush would authorize drilling in ANWAR, drilling off the coast of Florida and the creation of new oil refineries through an executive order in an attempt to cut off the flow of cash to terrorists in the Middle East by removing obstacles oil companies face in increasing US domestic oil and fuel production. It would be killing two birds with one stone, but I do not think that he will do it. :(

The oil industry wouldn't even notice, AT ALL! A gas station already bought the gasoline, and he would wonder Hmm, why I am not selling today? Then the next day (or the previous day) it would make up for it. His monthly sales would be the same, so he would buy the same amount for june, as he did for may.

Only way as a temporary/protest measure that I can see it would be noticed, is if the boycott were long enough for gas stations to cancel regular orders, causing the distributors to see a rise in on-hand stocks...perhaps even passing on pipeline/barge deliveries. Anything less is meaningless noise.

How about everyone just use less fuel? :-)

But that may actually work! :thumbdown:

It would be a lot of work, but it would be neat to know how much gasoline all of the gassavers members have saved vs epa numbers for their vehicles. I bet we save a lot of gasoline per year...and each month many of us do better and better! Maybe still not good enough, but better, and we should try and get the word out.

You know, that's probably not too hard at all... I think a simple database query can grab all the necessary info quite easily in one pass (EPA# - actual# - gallons used). Then interpret that data - simply calculate how many miles we would have gotten following the EPA estimate and compare to the actual mileage/gallons used. :thumbup:

It would be an interesting stat for the site - how many gallons/liters we haven't bought :thumbup: :thumbup:

We should save the ANWR until we really really need it.

Well let me figure this out:

Since selling our hybrid Escape in November, I have commuted to work by bicycle or bus approximately 90 days (after subtracting out the days when my wife has come to pick me up). In that 90 days, we have as individuals not driven 450 miles. 450 miles divided by the 30 mpg we were getting in the hybrid translates to 15 gallons of gas saved.

Hmmm, that's one full tank in the Escape. I don't think the oil companies have noticed. :P

It has barely been explored and exploration tends to increase the amount of oil that is known to be in an area. Presently, it is estimated that there are 17 billion barrels of oil stored there. At the present rate of crude oil imports, which is 10,126,000 barrels per day, it would take us approximately 1679 days, which is approximately 4.6 years, to consume all of the oil in ANWR if production there can replace all crude oil imports. Of course ANWR oil production will far more likely be a fraction of our current oil imports because if it was possible to extract oil from any oil field at such a rate, it would be being done and the US would be a net oil exporter (until all of the oil ran out); thus the oil in ANWR would last a number of years that is multiplied by the reciporical of the fraction of oil imports that it would replace. Assuming that fraction is 1/10, which should be a reasonable number, ANWR's oil would last 46 years.

ANWR's oil is not a drop in a bucket and it would have a significant effect, not a huge one, but a significant one because of the increase in the global supply of oil that it would bring (and OPEC would quickly cut production to bring the spot price of crude back up, but they would be making less money, meaning that less money will be going to fund terrorism). Furthermore, ANWR drilling is not the only method of lowering prices that I stated. I also stated that we can drill off the coast of Florida (Congress seems to want Fidel Castro to drill there as they have been blocking drilling there for years) and that more refineries could be built. It was on a news site that I visited (I followed a link from gasbuddy.com to find it) that if we cut our consumption by 4%, we would see a 50 cent drop in prices, as demand for refined petroleum products (e.g. gasoline) is outstripping the supply, so it stands to reason (I also read this on another news site a while back) that if we had more refineries, gasoline prices would go down. Drilling off the coast of Florida would further decrease US dependence on foreign oil, decreasing prices because of the increase in the global oil supply, leading OPEC to cut their production, which would further cut the terrorists' income. Allowing more refineries to be built will lower gasoline prices because even if the US acquired an infinite amount of oil, the fact that low refining capacity in the US is presently the largest driver of gasoline price growth would soon overcome the benefit of an infinite supply of oil.

In summary, President Bush could authorize drilling off the coast of Florida, drilling in ANWR and the construction of new refineries by an executive order, lifting the legal obstacles that Congress put into place specifically to prevent that, which would decrease US demand for foreign oil and lower gasoline prices. The decline in demand for foreign oil will lower prices on the world market, prompting OPEC to cut its production to compensate, lowering the amount of money that OPEC makes, beyond the decline in OPEC's revenue that would have resulted from lower prices, thus lowering the amount that it could use to fund terrorism. The increased refining capacity would ensure US domestic security by preventing supply disruptions of fuel to troops stationed abroad, increasing the effectiveness of the United States armed forces and lowering our prices by making the US demand/supply ratio smaller. Not to mention the trade deficit would shrink.

Edit: There is also the possibility of Congress passing an enormous tax on the sale of new fuel inefficient vehicles, which when combined with this, could potentially eliminate US dependence on foreign oil by lowering the demand for oil. This will work because the efficiency of US vehicles can be thought of as an equilibrium and high taxes on inefficient vehicles will place a stress on the equilibrium, moving it towards greater vehicle efficiency by Le Chatelier's principle (applied to this analogy) and greater vehicle efficiency would cut the demand for oil.

Or we could just hold the auto industry feet to the fire and raise the CAFE standard 4% a year for the next ten years and save more oil then there is in ANWR.

Sounds like a better idea than further damaging our planet to me...

Why not blame the members of Congress that voted for tariffs on the import of more efficient vehicles and the people buying inefficient vehicles for no purpose? Both are more to blame than the automobile manufacturers, who are only responding to demand and are already burdened by the federal government's 35% corporate income tax and its unconstitutional laws concerning organized labor (those laws would be constitutional if they were replaced by identical state laws; in which case the automobile industry would be being burdened by the states' constitutional laws concerning organized labor).

The planet is by no means damaged by these activities. The three-way catalytic converter ensured that. With the exception of military vehicles (because of the necessity that military vehicles be able to use jet fuel, which contains lead, something that poisons catalytic converters; hence there is no point in installing them), construction equipment (because of Congress), domestic SUVs and trucks (because of Congress), racing (because of Congress, although the racing industry is voluntarily improving its effect on the environment) and older vehicles (because of the United States Constitution clause on ex post facto situations), today's automobiles are all environmentally friendly.

Most heavy duty diesel equipment is not very clean. Surprisingly (not really) we've finally started to see all sorts of diesel emissions systems now that the EPA has significantly cut down on allowable heavy duty diesel emissions. In terms of environmentally friendlyness, well, that's just a matter of opinion. Generally speaking, we can almost always do better. However, once of the disadvantages of reduced emissions is improved efficiency, as was seen in the first gen Prius, which was designed to meet CARB fleet emissions regulations, and was later altered and marketed as a fuel efficient vehicle.

We've had to work through a glut in refining capacity and a relatively fuel efficient vehicle fleet for two decades to bump up against the roof in terms of gasoline/oil supply and send prices up. This has taken nearly twenty years, and now that prices and profits are through the roof, I don't think the major stock holders of companies like GM and Ford are going to approve a radical change in fleet efficiency, when they've spent so much time increasing demand for gasoline and oil, which they happen to hold way more stock in. Something as small as a consistent percent or two drop in consumption with supply staying steady would send prices through the floor for both oil and gasoline.

I agree, there is nothing wrong with the environment, cars don't pollute, and I'd love to live in the inspiringly clean aura of an oil refinery.

Lol, that's funny.

I was stuck in a traffic jam today in my city's only 'tunnel'. With everyone's engine idling, I was thinking how long we could go sitting there before people started getting ill...

If you want to know why gas prices are so high, do some reading at this site.

https://www.oilwatchdog.org/articles/...0&topicId=8057

Q

Oil is about the only thing where we don't have supply meeting demand, and we do nothing about it. If we were paying $20 for a frozen pizza that only costs $8 to make, we'd quit eating pizza, but not so in the fuel world. Oh well, we're all doing our part, what more can we do?