Want To Fight Back On High Gas Prices?

[frogtog]

May work or it may backfire won't know unless we try it.

NO GAS...On May 15th 2007

Body: Don't pump gas on may 15th

Body: ...in April 1997, there was a "gas out" conducted nationwide in

protest of gas prices.  Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.

On May 15th 2007, all internet users are to not go to a gas station in

protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places.

There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the internet network,

and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up.

If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take

$2,292,000,000.00 (that's almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companys pockets

for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and

let's try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry for at least one

day.

If you agree (which I can't see why you wouldn't) resend this to all your

contact list. With it saying, ''Don't pump gas on May 15th"

Let's support this cause by forwarding this e-mail to all your family &

friends.

[Glenn]

This will do nothing to lower gas prices.  It has no impact.  But there IS something you CAN do that WILL work.

Read on...

Why one-day gasoline 'boycott' won't work

[Long Mike]

Glenn, a very timely post.  I'm sure most folks are smart enough to realize that a one day boycott would mean absolutely nothing, but your post really drives the point home.

[frogtog]

Wellll I thought we had a plan. Do we have an American bicycle co. Mabe we could all buy bicycles and ride them whenever we did'nt absolutely have to use the car ( Going fishing is excluded from this ) that way our health would better

and we could afford to drive back and forth to work. That probably would'nt

work either, they would raise the prices of bicycles. :

[Catt]

May 14th: every one will fill up causing a huge spike in sales

May15th: no one buys gas causing a huge drop

May 16th: every thing back to normal

Income for the year ending 2006: Exxon/Mobile: $62,000,000,000

Do you think they could out?  

[cart7t]

All those internet users would be much better off sending an email to their respective congress person as to why they're sitting back allowing Big oil to gouge the marketplace which does nothing but kill the economy.

Here's another thought

Since we're basically protecting the state of Iraq from being taken over by thugs, why not get paid for it?

Iraq breaks from OPEC pricing and drops the price of gas $10 a barrel to any countries involved in their reconstruction. (The Brits and ourselves).  This is followed by a congressional investigation into big oil and the supply chain and their justification for basically gouging the American public.  Under scrutiny, I'm sure prices will fall back to a more affordable $2 a gallon or less at the pump.  Big oil will still make a nice profit,  Iraq gets a huge influx of funds for rebuilding and paying for their own protection thus relieving the American public of the obligation via taxes since they're paying for it through the gas pumps.  Collect back windfall taxes from big oil from past years when they've gouged the American public in the past and direct that money into alternative fuel and energy programs.

[frogtog]

Cart: that sounds like a good plan too.

[Catt]

Another solution  

Stop buying foreign oil, drill our own oil, build more of our own refineries, and quit giving our technology to foreign countries.

[Siebert Outdoors]

car pooling is one of the best solutions for now.  Buy a more fuel efficient car.  

Future is alternative fuel. Solar power.  Never happen though.  Cant tax it and cant sell it.  Its freeeeeee.  Same way as with the water engine.  Water is to cheap.  

Till we get congress men/women with big kahonees and say forget you all were going alternative fuel. The price will just keep going up.  The oil industry is a legalized monopoly.

The ones that line the law makers pockets wont ever have laws against them.

[BucketmouthAngler13]

I'm doing my part. In the past 4 weeks I have only gone somwhere in a car 7 times. (4 of those visiting my mom in the hospital)

In March I went 4 weeks without going anywhere in a car. (I didnt even get into a car)

I biked to church one week, the next week my dad was gone with the car, the next week I was sick, and the next week we drove. I'm homeschooled, my friends all live within 2.5 miles, all my fishing spots are within 6 miles, so basicly the only places I go in a car is church. (becuase its 12 miles and early in the mourning we usualy drive)

My family is pretty nutty about bikes. My oldest sister and my dad biked acrossed the country last summer and this summer my dad and my other 2 sisters are going all over canada. I like working on and building bikes, right now I have 3, two that I built. Last year my dad biked over 10,000 miles.

Why drive a car? It sucks up 1/4 of your income. Biking is cheap, good for you, and fun. If you invest all the money the you spend on cars over 30 years, you would have a million bucks. (not joking)

Infact, we use the car so little these days, we are going to get rid of it. With the money from the sale, my dad is going to buy me a really nice race bike.

I have rod holders (made from PVC) mounted on one of my bikes, along with a back rack. I use a backpack, and I can carry all the stuff I need for fishing (and then some) with no problem. Soft plastics' box goes on the rack, spinning rod in the holder, hardbaits/reels/camera/water/other in the backpack, swimbait rod in my left hand, and I'm good to go!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I get 22 miles per peanutbutter and jelly sandwich!

If you dont want to spend alot of money on gas, then dont do it! If you want to fight back on high gas prices, then get a bike and do somthing about it.

Tight lines and No Flats

Matt

[Bassboy15]

this is not going to work

[llPa1nll]

I'm doing my part. In the past 4 weeks I have only gone somwhere in a car 7 times. (4 of those visiting my mom in the hospital)

In March I went 4 weeks without going anywhere in a car. (I didnt even get into a car)

I biked to church one week, the next week my dad was gone with the car, the next week I was sick, and the next week we drove. I'm homeschooled, my friends all live within 2.5 miles, all my fishing spots are within 6 miles, so basicly the only places I go in a car is church. (becuase its 12 miles and early in the mourning we usualy drive)

My family is pretty nutty about bikes. My oldest sister and my dad biked acrossed the country last summer and this summer my dad and my other 2 sisters are going all over canada. I like working on and building bikes, right now I have 3, two that I built. Last year my dad biked over 10,000 miles.

Why drive a car? It sucks up 1/4 of your income. Biking is cheap, good for you, and fun. If you invest all the money the you spend on cars over 30 years, you would have a million bucks. (not joking)

Infact, we use the car so little these days, we are going to get rid of it. With the money from the sale, my dad is going to buy me a really nice race bike.

I have rod holders (made from PVC) mounted on one of my bikes, along with a back rack. I use a backpack, and I can carry all the stuff I need for fishing (and then some) with no problem. Soft plastics' box goes on the rack, spinning rod in the holder, hardbaits/reels/camera/water/other in the backpack, swimbait rod in my left hand, and I'm good to go!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I get 22 miles per peanutbutter and jelly sandwich!

If you dont want to spend alot of money on gas, then dont do it! If you want to fight back on high gas prices, then get a bike and do somthing about it.

Tight lines and No Flats

Matt

That may be a practical way for you while being a student but when you go to college and get a job things will be different. I live in an area where public transportation is not an option and I have a shorter commute than most. I couldnt fathom trying to ride a bike in through a New England winter.

Alternative fuels are the way to go for sure. As many have previously stated its not likely to happen any time soon. Its going to take allot of money to reconstruct the infrastructure to support some other kind of fuel. Nobody is going to do this for free.

[michbass]

Buy stock in exxon, The prices are just going to become part of life I think. It is just like anything else in life the price is always going up. I dont think there is anything that can be done to stop it. They know we need it and cant do without it. There are alot of other things going on in the world the bother me more than gas prices, like the safety of our soldiers. We are a country of complainers that do little too nothing to get anything changed.

[Long Mike]

Before anyone starts bashing the oil companies about their obscene profits, one must keep two things in mind.

1.  The oil companies themselves have very little influence on the price of a barrel of oil or a gallon of gasoline.  The price is determined by the futures traders at the Stock Market.  Every time OPEC farts, a refinery has a problem, a hurricane hits the Gulf, or a piece of crap country like Nigeria as an insurgent problem, these traders bid the price up.

2.  Instead of looking at the, say, $1 billion profit of an oil company and screaming that we are being raped, it would be much more prudent to have a look at the company's public financial statements.  If memory serves, that $1 Billion is only a 15% PreTax profit.  I would speculate that a 15% PreTax profit is about what Wal-Mart earns, but I hear very few people screaming rape.

If anyone has done the research, I would be more than happy to be proved wrong.

[Guest avid]

Let's talk business.

A one day boycott, while symbolic gestures are important, will do nothing to lower consumer costs.

BUT,

An ongoing boycott of the largest oil consortium, namely Exxon/Mobile (same company) would have a dramatic impact.

They are the bellweather company of the energy industry as as such are the real price setters.  They have the highest investment and operational budget.  Stop buying gas from the industry leader and they will be forced to lower prices to maintain revenue flow.

Continue the boycott to demonstrate the power of the consumer and we can break the stranglehold.

It's not about the Arabs folks.

[cart7t]

Before anyone starts bashing the oil companies about their obscene profits, one must keep two things in mind.

1.  The oil companies themselves have very little influence on the price of a barrel of oil or a gallon of gasoline.  The price is determined by the futures traders at the Stock Market.  Every time OPEC farts, a refinery has a problem, a hurricane hits the Gulf, or a piece of crap country like Nigeria as an insurgent problem, these traders bid the price up.

2.  Instead of looking at the, say, $1 billion profit of an oil company and screaming that we are being raped, it would be much more prudent to have a look at the company's public financial statements.  If memory serves, that $1 Billion is only a 15% PreTax profit.  I would speculate that a 15% PreTax profit is about what Wal-Mart earns, but I hear very few people screaming rape.

If anyone has done the research, I would be more than happy to be proved wrong.

By John W. Schoen

Senior Producer

MSNBC

Updated: 7:12 a.m. CT July 21, 2005

     

John W. Schoen

Senior Producer

Profile

E-mail

When major oil companies report their quarterly profits next week, they're once again expected to post record numbers. With crude trading around $60 a barrel, the oil industry is enjoying one of the biggest windfalls in its history. But as the industry looks for places to put that cash, it's finding it harder and harder to put funds to work finding new deposits of oil and natural gas.

By just about any measure, the past three years have produced one of the biggest cash gushers in the oil industry's history. Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion.

This is the mother of all booms, said Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit. They have so much profit, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. They don't know what to do with it.

The reason for the boom is simple. Much of the investment in finding that oil -- and developing the wells and pipelines needed to produce it -- has already been made. So an oil field that was profitable with oil selling for $20 a barrel is much more profitable with oil trading around $60.

That's left the industry with a happy problem -- what to do with enough cash to fill a supertanker. Many publicly traded oil companies have been busy buying back their own stock, which helps drive up the price of the rest of the shares left on the open market. Since January 2002, stocks of major oil companies have gained 88 percent; during that period the Standard and Poor's 500 index has gained less than half as much.

Oil producers have also given investors a raise by gradually increasing the dividends paid out to shareholders. And they've paid down their debts to record low levels. ExxonMobil, for example, is virtually debt-free - with a cash pile of more than $25 billion.

All of this industry good fortune has not escaped the notice of consumers, whose anger at higher gasoline prices has been rising in lock step with the price of crude. The energy bill recently enacted by both houses of Congress provides little relief for U.S. energy consumers. But a continued rise in prices could bring increased political pressure to find ways to lower the cost of energy, according to Tom Kloka at the Oil Price Information Service.

"This is something that Americans regard as their birth right," he said. "If gasoline prices are still north of $2.25 (a gallon) when we reach the midterm election, there's going to be an awful lot of outrage."

Thanks big oil.  If you're having such a hard time figuring out what to do with all this money how about stopping for a moment and thinking about what this windfall is doing to this great country that makes it possible for you to enjoy it.  How about giving up some of this by cutting back prices and taking less of a profit?

You're putting a serious hurt on the this economy and putting people out of jobs needlessly.

[PaparockArk]

Do not forget to thank all those that have been instrumental in the closing of gasoline refineries here in the USA. While this is a contested subject, there truly is more to the story. Anti-Oil groups say the Oil Companies conspired to do this however that I think is only part of the story as there is plenty of blame to go to politicians trying to gain office while lying about the facts both pro-oil and anti-oil, and greedy middle men. Etc., etc..

Take Casper, Wyoming where I lived for ten years for an example. There were three Oil Refineries located there one owned by Texaco, one by Amoco Oil Corp., and an Independent Oil Refinery. Due to the costs to continually upgrade the environmental controls on the gasoline units like the one I worked on as well as being require to install new state of the art water treatment both Texaco and Amoco shut down their refineries. I worked at the Amoco refinery. It annually made depending on the price of gas one to three million dollars a year profit because it was a very old refinery that required a huge maintenance budget. When the new EPA standards we were to meet came out and we heard the company was required to build a new water treatment facility to stay in operation. I told all my friends and fellow workers that Amoco was going to shut the refinery because the cost to just bring our one unit up to the new EPA code would take all the companies profit for the next 15 years. There were three other refinery units that would have to have their exhaust emissions upgraded, add that to who knew how much a new how many millions a new water plant would cost, then there was the fact at that time in the 1990s there was excess refining capacity and well it did not take a math genius to see the results. I voluntarily transferred to the Texas City, Texas, Amoco Refinery which is one of the largest gasoline producing refineries in the USA. Everyone in the Casper refinery said I was nuts and that the refinery would be fine. Eighteen months later I saw many of my former friends in Casper come to work in the Texas City, Texas Refinery.

For what ever reasons or whom you want to blame, 50 refineries in the past decade since 1995 alone, 24 refinery closings have taken nearly 830,000 barrels of oil per day out of availability. Even if we were floating in oil the limiting factor now to get gasoline to the pump is the refining capacity. Let us see, you would have been the leadership of the country responsible for energy policy then over the last decade of the 90s say 1993-2000. I cannot say because that would violate the no political posts rule of the forum but in fact there is plenty of blame for everyone to share. The question is what are those responsible now going to do about it????? We are waiting of the leadership of congress who has the job and responsibility to legislate to act if and/or when it becomes impotant to them.

[timmyswetarded]

yeah i saw this as a group on facebook

[senko_77]

This will do nothing to lower gas prices. It has no impact. But there IS something you CAN do that WILL work.

Read on...

Why one-day gasoline 'boycott' won't work

Great link Glenn.  I enjoyed reading it.  

[Catt]

P_Rock that is the exact reason we are now dependent on foreign oil, that and we give our technology of how to refine oil to foreign countries.  

[Dan:]

I think P_Rock has the idea. We need to increase our refining capacity, that will help.

This boycott will do nothing, and it's pretty obvious why.

Alternative fuels sound great, but let's see them actually work. All of America's corn would only produce enough ethanol for 12% of our fuel needs. Also, if we switched to ethanol, we would need to grow lots more crops and use lots more fertilizers in order to grow enough corn to produce a large amount of ethanol. All of those additional chemicals make ethanol a poor "green" alternative to gas.

And there already have been studies on the oil companies recent profits. They have found nothing illegal. What we need to do is either get OPEC to stop being such idiots or we need to drill for our own oil and increase refining capacity so that we can do it ourselves.

[timmyswetarded]

dont forget about other nations such as china and japan that dont have vast quantities of oil and are creating enormous amount of competition for oil

[PaparockArk]

Over 30 years ago a lot of us, fresh out of college boys back then, tried to convince both the US Government and the Seven Sisters (the Major OIL Companies) to begin the serious development of hydrogen as the next come on fuel to gasoline. It would save lives because it does not explode in fuel tanks as gasoline does. The exhaust, hydrogen burns combining with oxygen to equal water with only that part converted into energy "lost" as a result. This was back in 1971, so over the years if their had been steady development with the profits of oil, gas, and tax dollars placed into the project this nation today would not have the gas, and oil dependency problems we face. However money, greed, cheep oil, and as usually no will or leadership in Congress needed to pass the necessary legislation to proactively deal with a coming problem so once again problems have come home to bite the average citizen because it has not been important enough for Congress to deal with. They have bigger more important things on their minds than to solve the problems of the average person on the street. What other reason could there be because these problems have been known since I was 20 years old and I am now 57. I spent over 30 years in and around oil refining and if a dumb guy like me could see the problem then why could not all the self proclaimed geniuses in Congress and those that have occupied the White House not have authored legislative fixes over the last 30 plus years????

Makes one wonder doesn't it?

[Guest avid]

I can be a bit of "conspiracy theory" type at times.

The lack of a clean, safe, cost efficient fuel 35 years after after the first of the crippling gas shortages, makes me think that there are powerful forces at work.

I have no evidence to back up what I'm about to say, but I truly believe that there is some kind of timetable that the power brokers of the world are operating on.

There is only so much oil out there.  Most of the accesable oil is being pumped.  The oil companies, now calling themselves energy companies are manipulating the research and engineering of alternative fuels untill they have milked the oil teat dry.

It's just what I believe.

[BucketmouthAngler13]

I'm doing my part. In the past 4 weeks I have only gone somwhere in a car 7 times. (4 of those visiting my mom in the hospital)

In March I went 4 weeks without going anywhere in a car. (I didnt even get into a car)

I biked to church one week, the next week my dad was gone with the car, the next week I was sick, and the next week we drove. I'm homeschooled, my friends all live within 2.5 miles, all my fishing spots are within 6 miles, so basicly the only places I go in a car is church. (becuase its 12 miles and early in the mourning we usualy drive)

My family is pretty nutty about bikes. My oldest sister and my dad biked acrossed the country last summer and this summer my dad and my other 2 sisters are going all over canada. I like working on and building bikes, right now I have 3, two that I built. Last year my dad biked over 10,000 miles.

Why drive a car? It sucks up 1/4 of your income. Biking is cheap, good for you, and fun. If you invest all the money the you spend on cars over 30 years, you would have a million bucks. (not joking)

Infact, we use the car so little these days, we are going to get rid of it. With the money from the sale, my dad is going to buy me a really nice race bike.

I have rod holders (made from PVC) mounted on one of my bikes, along with a back rack. I use a backpack, and I can carry all the stuff I need for fishing (and then some) with no problem. Soft plastics' box goes on the rack, spinning rod in the holder, hardbaits/reels/camera/water/other in the backpack, swimbait rod in my left hand, and I'm good to go!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I get 22 miles per peanutbutter and jelly sandwich!

If you dont want to spend alot of money on gas, then dont do it! If you want to fight back on high gas prices, then get a bike and do somthing about it.

Tight lines and No Flats

Matt

That may be a practical way for you while being a student but when you go to college and get a job things will be different. I live in an area where public transportation is not an option and I have a shorter commute than most. I couldnt fathom trying to ride a bike in through a New England winter.

Well my dad has two jobs and he always walks/bikes, my older sister has three jobs and always bikes, my other older sister and my brother go to college and work and always ride bikes. We bike to the store, I bike to where ever I go, and so does my younger sister. We live a area with no public transport and pretty cold winters too.

When there is a will there is a way.

IMHO blaming gas prices on the goverement and pumping gas every few days is like complaining about new laws when you dont vote.