Gas War???????
 

Are you dreaming of Gas prices falling to $1.50 a gallon? Can it be a reality again? Consider this. The buyers control the market,not the sellers. For the rest of the year,DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest oil companies: Exxon and Mobil which are now one giant company.If they are not selling gas,they will have to reduce their prices,the other companies will have to follow suite,right? But to have an impact,we need to reach millions of EXXON-MOBIL gas buyers. How do we do that? By use of the internet and word of mouth. I tell 10 friends,you tell 10 friends, they tell 10 friends and so on and so on and so on. Will it work? If this makes sense to you,pass this information along.Stop buying your gasoline from EXXON-MOBIL,cut up your Mobil credit card and see if we the people can't get gas prices down to around $1.30 a gallon.In the good old days,this was called a GAS WAR.

I thought that i recognized that...I had gotten a few chian-mail emails on it and I researched and although it sounds like a good idea, it is just an urban hoax.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/gasout.asp

"Claim: Participating in a boycott of selected oil companies will lower gasoline prices.

Status: False. "

~and~

"Origins: This year's litany of complaints about gasoline prices is a re-run of the same program from years past: Gasoline prices in the USA are too high; gasoline is a unique commodity whose price isn't subject to the usual market forces of supply and demand; OPEC and greedy American oil companies secretly manipulate the market to keep prices artificially high; and a simple boycott of a couple of brands of gasoline will rectify all
this.

Oil companies can manipulate their prices somewhat by controlling how much gasoline they produce and where they sell it, but they can't alter the basics of supply and demand: prices go down when people buy less of a good, prices go up when people buy more of a good, and prices go way up when demand outstrips available supply. The "gas out" schemes that propose to alter the demand side of the equation by shunning one or two specific brands of gasoline for a while won't work, however, because they're based on the misconception that an oil company's only outlet for gasoline is its own branded service stations. That isn't the case: gasoline is a fungible commodity, so if one oil company's product isn't being bought up in one particular market or outlet, it will simply sell its output to (or through) other outlets:
Economics Prof. Pat Welch of St. Louis University says any boycott of "bad guy" gasoline in favor of "good guy" brands would have some unintended (and unhappy) results.

. . . Welch says the law of supply and demand is set in stone. "To meet the sudden demand," he says, "the good guys would have to buy gasoline wholesale from the bad guys, who are suddenly stuck with unwanted gasoline."

So motorists would end up . . . paying more for it, because they'd be buying it at fewer stations.

And yes, oil companies do buy and sell from one another. Mike Right of AAA Missouri says, "If a company has a station that can be served more economically by a competitor's refinery, they'll do it."

Right adds, "In some cases, gasoline retailers have no refinery at all. Some convenience-store chains sell a lot of gasoline — and buy it all from somebody else's refinery."
A boycott of a couple of brands of gasoline won't result in lower overall prices. Prices at all the non-boycotted outlets would rise due to the temporarily limited supply and increased demand, making the original prices look cheap by comparison. The shunned outlets could then make a killing by offering gasoline at its "normal" (i.e., pre-boycott) price or by selling off their output to the non-boycotted companies, who will need the extra supply to meet demand. The only person who really gets hurt in this proposed scheme is the service station operator, who has almost no control over the price of gasoline.

The only practical way of reducing gasoline prices is through the straightforward means of buying less gasoline, not through a simple and painless scheme of just shifting where we buy it. The inconvenience of driving less is a hardship too many people apparently aren't willing to endure, however. "

lizzardbits,

Oh well, it looked good on paper. :rolleyes:

We have two gas stations in town. Yes, a whopping two. lmfao One's a Mobil and the other a Citgo.

We used to joke about what would happen if one decided to drop it's price a penny lower than the other and the maylay that would follow. Until we found out they were owned by the same peckerhead. :(

No gas wars in our town except the ones that take place after the VFW's Ham & Bean Supper. :p

Note:



(1 Gal. = 3.7854 lt, AUD$1 = USD$.76 )

In any event, it would be my luck to get a job driving for a living just as the price of gas goes thru the fuckin' roof...

They tried some thing simular in Melbourne it did absolutly nothing as it did not get common support and fizzed out, we have all the large super market chains offering 4c a litre of the cost of petrol if you spend $30 or more at their shop, so prople go to these stores and spend their money to get the docket for the discount, so lets look at the process in detail :- most cars have around a 60 litre tank assuming they are driving around on fumes, they buy their food get the docket then go fill the car that cost $83.40(@$1.39ltr) + $30.00 for the food = $113.40 and for that they get $2.40 back on the petrol that has a inflated price to cover the cost of the 4c program, so how dumb are we, have we forgot you dont get something for nothing.

by the way Sharni LPG is 42c here

not to mention that gas/oil usage is a worldwide need and the skyrocketing consumption of the up and coming world powers fuels (hehe) much of that demand. shall we tell china and india to take it easy on the supply so that we can fill our suburban uhsault vehicles for less? the gas companies are not non-profit orgs, they have every right to make as much of a profit as they can. these recent allegations of price gouging are ridiculous. stop the subsidies first.

We Qlders are definately getting ripped off.....we pay in our rego so we can get cheaper fuel...pfffttttt....so much for that then...dear fuel and dear rego!

Hey i just paid 2 cents less per gallon then I did the other day :)

E85 was selling for $2.26 a gallon just the other day. You get lower fuel mileage with E85, but if the price difference is more than $.40 a gallon you are paying less per mile. Of coures you have to have a FFV(flex-fuel vehicle). :)

Can anyone else living today remember when a gas war meant 15 cents a gallon???????

And you got a glass or a dish. :D rofl

.... and Eagle Stamp, from the man that PUMPED your gas, washed your windshield and checked your oil and water. :rolleyes: