More on fuel prices

[#1]

The following was sent to me by a friend of mine, it may have been doing the rounds for a while, but it's the first time I've seen it. I'll make no comment, but leave you to make up your own minds:

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it
We are hitting 123.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying 2.00 a ltr. 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, we need to take  aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place
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 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 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!!! 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 
It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your  petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e.  boycott BP and Esso

[#2]

All very well but you have to know who is the cheapest in your area.
Try http://www.petrolprices.com there service is free, if you sign up, they send you a weekly e-mails, and you have access to any area in the Uk in 5, 10 or 20 mile range petrol or Derv and you can do a number of randon serches per period.
                                                                   

[#3]

Are we going to compete with the usual spammers?

[#4]

in what respect Bob

[#5]

Erm!  Excuse me.... but where do Morrisons, Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury, etc., get their petrol from?
Why Esso and Shell and BP refineries of course..... so how can "not buying from Jim, lower the overall price from uncle tom cobbley and all?

[#6]

Pierre,

Quote

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!!! Acting together we can make a difference . If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

In that respect old fella.

[#7]

Totally agree with Shutter, there aren't that many refiners and it's the refining of the oil not the forecourt sales - where apparently it's only a few pence profit per litre.

[#8]

@ Shutter, not 100% true, do you remember the contaminated fuel last year, a lot of that came from a local refinery to me, but, within that refinery are several companies, the rogue one got his fuel I think from Rotterdam.
@Bob, you might also get yourself black listed for doing bulk e-mails
also what if the Esso and Tesco charge the same?

[#9]

When I was working for BP developing software for the forecourt systems, they were only making less then 0.5p profit on every litre sold. I suspect the profit is even less now.
Also not all oil companies refine their own fuel so the refinery was often supplying to many different oil companies.
So this idea will not work as the oil companies make their profit in the refining, not the distribution or sale of fuel.

[#10]

Quote

@ Shutter, not 100% true,

Even if only 20% of fuel was "independently" refined, the other 80% would be distributed through the supermarkets, and the overall effect of the above email would be almost nil.
The lorry drivers had the right idea, to blockade the refineries. however, they were scuppered by backroom negotiations.  What really would make the government, and the oil companies, take notice, would be for the lorry drivers to actually organize in secret, to suddenly descend on major town centres "en masse", without warning the police beforehand.  By driving very slowly the general traffic would grind to a halt, and even gridlock.... The drawback to this?  what about the emergency services Fire Engines, and Ambulances, if they were needed to an incident......
So it seems there is little the actual motoring public can do about the problem. Even though we are in our millions, any "bulk action" would have it`s side effect problems, that outweigh the effectiveness.

[#11]

It's the price of a barrel of crude oil that's gone through the roof, one of the by-products of which is petrol.
Who exactly is causing this increase by restricting world supplies of crude...OPEC? How do we hit them

[#12]

Scud missiles? 

[#13]

OPEC are not restricting supplies as such, its places like China who's demand for oil has increased beyond what is currently available on a daily basis. OPEC can't just keep increasing supply as that then results in stocks being exhauseted even faster.
OPEC are also blaming the oil speculators for inflating the price. As the price went higher, more and more speculators came into the market to trade oill and make a fast buck.
Also the smaller suppliers like Nigera and to some extent Iraq have been hit by supply problems, which together with anticipated lower than normal stocks in the US has meant prices have skyrocketed.
The market is so fragile that any bad news, no matter how small effects the market more than it did in the past.

[#14]

Quote from: shutter

Scud missiles?

The Navy's answer to every problem.
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So it's the Chinese who are to blame for wanting to better themselves. That can only get worse. £5/litre on the horizon.