ARE WE OVER DUE FOR A GASOLINE BOYCOTT

I fueled up my Navigator & my Vette & 2 five gallon drums at $3.05 premium so I can boycott for a whole week

Maybe the price gougers will be exposed by then, slimebags

 

why can't one station make there prices like $2.50? it would seem like what they lose in price/gallon they make up in the amount of people going there.

 

i thought about that and asked a guy at the gas station about two weeks ago... Alas, he wasn't the owner, but he said he didn't understand why the owner didn't do it, either... Raise the prices as high as people will pay and people will pay...

 

The margin on gas is very low - $0.10 a gallon if a station owner is lucky. If they dropped the price $0.50, they'd be losing a lot of money. You can't make that up in volume!

What's with Bush's statement: "Don't buy gas if you don't need it" - who buys gas if they don't need it??? Or is he expecting a lot of people to do what William did and start filling up big containers in reserve? Gotta love this guy... he flies over in Air Force One on his way home from vacation.

 

Boycotting gas is the same as boycotting food...

You can only go so long...for me, about 1/2 a day .

 

Gas station owners make zilch on gas...the profit is on the food and donuts.

 

I understood the statement to mean "don't waste gas, conserve if possible"

I waste gas all of the time. I get bored, I go out for a 3 hour drive. It's a waste.

And what's wrong with flying in AF1? How do you suggest he travel? If mayhem breaks loose while he is in the air, AF1 acts as a flying command center full of communications equipment and all sorts of gizmos to help keep the President in touch with with what is going on in the world, as well as keeping him safe.

 

If he meant "don't waste gas", then I completely understand that. However, "don't buy gas if you don't need it" doesn't make quite as much sense.

Nothing is wrong with flying in AF1. I suppose I just got a kick out of seeing the picture in the news article of him peeking out the window from tens of thousands of feet above. He is trying to get a private fund raiser together with Bush Sr. and Clinton, which I think is a great move.

 

I think it would be far smarter to boycott one or two companies. I don't know what you have in the US. Pick one of the bigger ones and nobody buys gas from them. You can still buy all the gas you want from the others, but they will have to adjust their pricing, forcing others to follow suit.

 

I think it's a typical Bush'ism, poorly phrased, semi-cryptic, etc. I think he meant, don't fill up if you don't need to.

I was just doing a back of the envelope - the difference between filling up at 1/8-1/4 full versus filling up when 1/2 full is probably 2-2.5 gallons more gasoline sitting in the tank per car (assuming avg gas tank is 15-20 gallons these days). If there are 100M cars in the US, that works out to an extra 200-250M gallons one-time increase in consumption. Since the US consumes 20M barrels/day, 42 gallons/barrel and 50% avg becomes gasoline, that works out to about 1/2 of a days production of gasoline. If people start buying 5-gallon gas cans and storing it in their garage, it can get a bit worse.

That's significant when it hits all at once, particularly with some local refineries off-line. At the same time, it's a blip that can be worked through in a few weeks. Once people get tired of stopping at the gas station 50% more often, then the blip will back out and should show up as lower demand by the same amount.

 

That cant be true under the current circumstances.

Gas is $3.50 a gallon around the greater Boston area these days. Thats ridiculous. It was $2.50 a gallon just a few weeks ago. Gas station owners have raised prices because people are hearing about "gas price hikes" and they are just getting in on the action.

If Shell/Exxon/Mobil/BP/Citgo had announced gas price increases, then I can see the station owners reacting, but they are not - they are taking advantage of a tragic situation to extort money from people.

I am amazed that as important as gas is to our daily lives, its price is not regulated much like power, natural gas, or even phone service.

Something should be done immediately about gas prices. The thing is, when prices come back down, it will only go back down 70% of what it went up. A few weeks back people were screaming about $2.75 a gallon. Soon they will be loving anythin under $3. Its nuts.

 

I still don't fully understand how that would be beneficial. If I bought 1/4 of a tank every single day, or 1 full tank every 4 days, it works out to be the same. In fact, it seems BETTER to me to fill up all at once, because less gas is wasted going back and forth to the gas station every single day.

I think John was right - Bush was referring to wasting gas. That's the only way it makes any sense.

 

I saw an eerie clip on TV of AF1 circling around the Superdome at 2000ft. You could clearly see that it was AF1, so strange...

 

Gas station owners only make a few cents per gallon, but what happens when they have gas in their tanks that they bought last week for say $2.45 wholesale and now they are selling for $3.25? I would think that there are people making more than a few cents per gallon.

 

You're misunderstanding, I wasn't saying partial fill-ups. Most people *fill-up* to FULL, the choice is at what level the needle is reading when you stop at a station to fill-up.

If you fill-up when the needle hits 1/8 (most people's behavior), your average tank level between 1/8 and FULL is about 9/16ths of a tank. If you fill-up when the needle hits 1/2, your average tank level between 1/2 and FULL is 3/4's of a tank. The difference between 9/16th's and 3/4's, or 3/16ths, is a temporary increase in consumption if most people do it. But once you've done it, it is no longer extra consumption since the extra gas stays in the tank.

 

I see what you mean. I suppose he was trying to prevent everyone from going to the gas station more often than they normally would, in fear of another price jump every single day. In the short run it makes a little bit of sense, but doesn't matter much in the long run. But as Keynes said, "in the long run, we're all dead."

 

How come folks NEVER boycott the Sierra Club? or the Environmental Resources Defense Fund? or the EPA? These people have prevented energy sources from being built to meet an ever growing demand, why all of the sudden when prices go up due to a decreased supply, is it the oil companies fault?

Why it is so obscene that the oil companies make a profit. But when the government makes a killing in new taxes on top of existing ones, we just accept it?

There are things that we can do to alleviate the situation, such as production and distribution. There will be people who will oppose this, and in the process of opposing it they will show themselves as who they are: The obstacles of progress. They will demonstrate they are the real problems, not fossil fuels, and not the oil companies, and not the refineries, and not the shipping and the tanker owners who ship this stuff around the world. It's not the Saudis, and it's not OPEC. The biggest problem we have to plentiful energy supplies and distribution, can be found right here in the American environmentalist left, and there's no greater opportunity for this to be displayed to all the people of this country than right now.

 

Wanna boycott gas prices? Ride a Bicycle.

 

Again,that doesn't make any sense. They still get 6 days of gas sales, you still drive your cars 7 days a week, and those sales will just transfer to monday.

I already gave a solution above that I think will be much more effective.

 

Not sure how that would remotely affect anything. It'd just increase the business on the other days of the week.

 

and before the boycott, everyone would fill up the night before. Thus nullifying the whole thing.