Red Hot Action (on petrol prices?)

[john]

Written in the true style of a SPAM chain e-mail - but this one is not about porn, viagra or donating cash to an exiled king of a little-known African nation. No, this one relates to a subject that affects us all:

Here it is, comment and debate welcomed below.

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FW: petrol prices(this just might work)

Join the resistance!!!!

I hear we are going to hit close to 89p a litre by the summer.

Want petrol prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action.
Phillip Hollsworth, in the USA, 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 with us!

By now you're probably thinking petrol priced at about 77p a litre is super cheap. Me too! It is currently 79p - 83p for regular unleaded in some towns.

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP at 77p-80p, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace.... 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.

How?

Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying petrol. But we CAN have an impact on petrol 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 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 on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to about thirty 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. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am... so trust me on this one.)

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 8 days!!! 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.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.
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[saabman]

It would be even better If somebody could put one of those virus type thing's on it so it passed it on to every e-mail address in your address book when you open your mail.

[gassy]

I think its not a bad idea, but impractical. It would only work if the tabloid newspapers got behind it, which they won't because they'll leave themselves open to litigation. They could, on the other hand, publicise it without comment (which they wouldn't).

For reference, I received the same mail on Friday last week, does anyone know how long its been going round?

What irkes me is that the price of LPG is supposedly linked - on the international markets - to the price of heating oil, rather than oil for petroleum, but bugger me if the prices don't change in concert with petrol prices. And it's a double bugger because LPG comprises most of the waste products you see getting flared off at oil refineries.

So personally I'm not that bothered about petrol prices, I just wish they'd let LPG prices drop from 37p / litre to 30p, say.

[MikeH]

I am ready to give it a try,one problem will be the fact that if your company uses a BP/Shell fuel card you are bu*****d,but anything is better than doing nothing.

[Dave Beddows]

And if you're running out of petrol and the only petrol station you can find is a BP one........... and which oil company do supermarkets get their petrol from (I'm still getting petrol at 69p a litre with the voucher I get every time I spend £40 at Tesco). Have to say that I will hugely resent any further petrol protests unless all the farmers turn up in PETROL driven vehicles rather than the (refined?)red diesel powered machinery they probably turned up in last time

[captain aero]

The upside is that fuel pricing is so sensitive to so many factors that if just say 25% of regular BP/Esso motorists stopped buying fuel from these filling stations BP/Esso would reduce prices within a week or two.

The downside is that as soon as BP/Esso prices were to drop by a couple of pence motorists would flock straight back to their filling stations within hours.

It will be difficult to sustain this action but anything is worth a try and it may keep the oil companies on there toes for some time to come.

[MikeH]

Dave,
i think you have the wrong idea about red diesel.Unless I am very misstaken it may not be used on the road,other than moving around the farm.
At the last protest the farmers complaint was that the Hauliers had to pay more,so charged the farmers more,all on deminishing profits.

[rob123]

MikeH, quite right about Red diesel. Can only be used for legitimate farming purposes and not for road use. (except in tractors going from field to field etc.)V. unwise to risk being caught with it as the samples are taking by Customs & Excise at the injectors and not the tank. We had a Landrover that had , two tanks, one 'pink' for driving around the farm, and one 'white' for the road. Always took care to switch them over in good time.JCBs etc in the construction industry and dumpers also use 'pink'. On farm drying plant use 'pink'.Still some advantages for farmers in other areas though. Implement sheds make very good indoor riding schools and 'firefighting reservoirs 'are often tiled and painted blue on the inside !!!

[MikeH]

Ilike it,Ilikeit.

[sgould]

...and they said on the TV last week that Customs & Excise were going to 'upgrade' the red dye to a green / yellow soluble dye. Reason: "to be the same as Europe" (real reason: Red dye can be filtered out!!)

Many years ago I was stopped near Amersham for a routine licence check and when they realised that the car was diesel they passed me on to their C&E colleagues at the other end of the lay-by for a fuel check. Wondered why the gateways down the road were full of lorries parked up

[1989agoodvintage]

I received that e-mail (or an earlier version thereof) about a year ago. Other than that, I can't anything more to the discussion

[Dave Beddows]

Nope, I'm not wrong for one thing it is far from impossible to remove the red dye from 'Red' diesel and a guy I went to university with ran his car exclusively on it (well until he started getting serious with a girl who worked for Customs and Excise and decided the stash in his garage might 'upset' the relationship!) I think this topic largely depends on how near you live to a farming comunity as to how easy/widespread you think it is

[mutungi]

Petroleum Industry....do not mess with this economic might ! People in general are too materialistic, selfish and reliant on this commodity to make sacrifices which would effect this industry.....do not waste words, enjoy driving your SAABS tanks full!

[anglosaxon001]

In my humble opinion this would work, if sufficient numbers got behind it. Yes, when the prices dropped the whole cycle would soon begin again but I think it could be worth it.

The real problem is that we are so used to being ripped off many are too lethargic to bother. The French, though are often taking action...and getting results. It IS about time we did something and surely taking action that fails is far better than doing nothing and letting ourselves get p***ed all over !! We should all try and change the habits of people we know...It MIGHT have an impact.

p.s. I am currently having a break in the USA....petrol prices to make you drool with envy !!

[kprm77]

An interesting reply from Ben on this:

Okay, lets have a look at the cost or petrol before tax. I think that about
80% of the cost of petrol in the UK is tax. So, your 80p litre of petrol is
16p for the petrol and 64p for the government.

I wonder where that 16p goes?

I can shed some light on the "upstream" costs of getting crude oil out of
the ground. At the moment in the oil industry the desire is to achieve a
finding cost of less than $3 per barrel, developing cost of less than $3 per
barrel, and producing cost of less than $1 per barrel. "Finding" is all the
exploration work (geology, geophysics, seismic surveys, exploration wells),
"developing" is putting in the development wells with which to extract the
oil and the engineering work for all the "plumbing" to collect the oil,
"producing" is the running costs of then actually sucking the black stuff
out of the ground.

So, we are looking at about $9 per barrel
= $9 per 159 litres (35 UK gallons, 42 US gallons)
= approx £6.30 per 159 litres
= 4 pence per litre

This is the price of getting 1 litre of crude oil out of the ground. That
litre is coming out of a pipe somewhere inhospitable, most likely either in
the middle of the sea or the middle of a desert.
The next step is to transport your crude oil to a refinery either by ship or
by pipeline. I don't know how much shipping costs are or how much pipeline
tariffs are, but they add to your petrol cost.
You then have to refine your crude oil to turn it into petrol.
Then transport the petrol to distribution centres and ultimately to the
petrol stations.
All these things COST money. We haven't mentioned PROFIT yet.
Each step involves people who will want to profit from their endeavours and
do a little better than simply covering their costs.
At the end of the day oil companies make very little profit from petrol
sales.
Petrol is not core business for oil companies. Joe Public might think so
because petrol stations are a very visible reminder of oil companies'
presence and buying petrol makes a big dent in Joe's wallet.

I know this is a very simplistic view, but oil companies worldwide are
finding/developing/producing oil for very similar costs, but worldwide
petrol costs vary considerably. How can this be...???
TAX!!!

In the most recent budget the chancellor increased the tax on North Sea
crude oil which (aside from being a stupid thing to do in an oil province
which is declining) will get passed on to the final consumer.

Here in Egypt petrol is 16p a litre. Why? Cos there's bugger all tax on it!
Which is just as well with 4 litres of engine drinking it faster than a Man
U fan drinking beer to drown his sorrows!

cheers,

Ben.


Dr Ben Hall
Senior Geophysicist
Burullus
Building 18, Road 293
Maadi, Cairo
Egypt

PS. Have recieved this petrol boycott email separately at work, so it must be doing the rounds...