High Gas prices, Join the resistance! [POLL]

[pdn]

I got this message at work, please read below! Something worth reading!
Subject: Join the resistance!

I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon
by the summer. Want
gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some
intelligent, united
action. Phillip Hollsworth, offered this good idea:
This makes MUCH MORE
SENSE than the "don't buy gas 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 gas.
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 gasoline priced at
about $1.50 is super
cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.97 for regular
unleaded in my town.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have
conditioned us to think
that the cost! of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50-
$1.75, we need to take
aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control
the marketplace....not
sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more
each day, we consumers
need to take action. The only way we are going to
see the price of gas come
down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not
purchasing their gas!
And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How?
Since we all rely on our
cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have
an impact on gas 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 gasoline
from the two biggest companies (which now are one),
EXXON and MOBIL. If they

are not selling any gas, 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 Exxon and Mobil
gas 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 e-mail 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 $1.30 RANGE AND
KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS
CAN REALLY WORK.


Kerry Lyle, Director, Research Coordinator
Interventional Cardiology Research Laboratories

 

[fs5]

sigh, not again
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/gasout.htm

 

[ElFenix]

damnit this was posted in the last week!

 

[Kalvin00]

re...re...repost!

And it's ~$2.07 here.

 

[Kalvin00]

woops

 

[WinkOsmosis]

High gas prices are a good thing. Remember what happened in the 70s and 80s? Cars got much more efficient.

 

[Narse]

Are people really this stupid? I guess so, as many of these chain letters we see posted

Why can't people think for themselves anymore????

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
High gas prices are a good thing. Remember what happened in the 70s and 80s? Cars got much more efficient.

*sigh* Cars didn't get more efficient. Engines got smaller. For the most part anyway. There was, of course, certian efficiency gains but not in the degrees you're talking about. Considering the fact that half of the cars out there today are over sized lawn mowers I doubt you'll much more "efficiency" gains outside of hybrid technology. Nice thought though. If that's how you rationalize getting bent over, sans lube or even a reach around, that's your call I guess.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Just think, we'd be paying at least 50% of what we are if the gov't removed the taxes...

I blame OPEC first, the US gov't second, gas companies third.

 

[FoBoT]

stop posting

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
High gas prices are a good thing. Remember what happened in the 70s and 80s? Cars got much more efficient.

*sigh* Cars didn't get more efficient. Engines got smaller. For the most part anyway. There was, of course, certian efficiency gains but not in the degrees you're talking about. Considering the fact that half of the cars out there today are over sized lawn mowers I doubt you'll much more "efficiency" gains outside of hybrid technology. Nice thought though. If that's how you rationalize getting bent over, sans lube or even a reach around, that's your call I guess.

Cars got smaller and lighter. There has been increased use of electronically controlled systems which has increased fuel efficiency.

I have had enough economics to know you can not set the price of commodities on a long term basis like this.

People need to drive more efficient cars and or cars that use other fuel types.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Originally posted by: Dr Smooth

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
High gas prices are a good thing. Remember what happened in the 70s and 80s? Cars got much more efficient.

*sigh* Cars didn't get more efficient. Engines got smaller. For the most part anyway. There was, of course, certian efficiency gains but not in the degrees you're talking about. Considering the fact that half of the cars out there today are over sized lawn mowers I doubt you'll much more "efficiency" gains outside of hybrid technology. Nice thought though. If that's how you rationalize getting bent over, sans lube or even a reach around, that's your call I guess.

Cars got smaller and lighter. There has been increased use of electronically controlled systems which has increased fuel efficiency.

Eh, I guess I should have specifically said engines. Absolutely, there have been some efficiency increases in engine technology as I said, but again, not to the degree that he's talking about. And as you said, it isn't all due to the engines. Hopping to see any great efficiency gains in normal sized cars that are not hybrids is wishful thinking at best. That was the point I was trying to make.

 

[hdeck]

people in europe have been paying these prices for years now. they are all laughing at us.

 

[TitanDiddly]

Teh R!

 

[TechnoKid]

It'll be a day when we all move to 1.3 litre powered diesel cars like some in Europe.

 

[Genesys]

I, like most of you, am tired of seeing these silly chain letters, but if we are to ever maintain any sort of control over petrol prices, we really do need to heed some of these lame chain letters.

and whoever did this one, change it from exxon//mobil to something like Shell//Texaco or Chevron. Im sure Exxon//Mobil is tired of being the scape goat for these silly sorts of grass roots movements.

 

[waffel]

This was in Newsweek a couple weeks ago, interesting read about OPEC and gas prices.
Text

The Cartel We Love to Hate
Americans despise OPEC as a conspiracy against cheap gas. But we may have a common interest in stable?not low?energy prices
By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek

Feb. 23 issue - We ought to reconsider OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). For years, we've imagined it as a monstrous conspiracy designed to gouge oil-consuming countries and, in particular, to deprive Americans of their birthright to cheap gasoline. OPEC's only saving grace, we've believed, is that it doesn't work especially well. Fine. Well, we may be wrong on all counts. Since 1999, OPEC has increasingly succeeded in setting oil prices, and this hasn't much harmed us. It may not in the future, either.

Just last week, OPEC announced a 10 percent cut in production that, by the standard logic, is ruinous. Prices already hover around $30 a barrel, and OPEC's 11 members provide about two fifths of the world's supply. If they cut output, prices will jump, possibly jeopardizing economic recovery. The OPEC retort is simple: we're trying to stabilize prices, not raise them. Global demand usually peaks in the winter, when many countries need more oil for heating. As demand slackens in the spring, OPEC says it will gradually cut production to cushion any decline in prices. Even so, prices may drift toward $25, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi last week told the Middle East Economic Survey.

We'll see. What's clearer is that our interests also lie in fairly stable prices?to be sure, at reasonable and not exorbitant levels?rather than erratic swings between exceptionally low and destructively high prices. To understand why, consider our two basic oil problems.

The first is that oil is concentrated in the world's least stable region, the Middle East. Persian Gulf suppliers (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates) now provide about 25 percent of world production, and they represent two thirds of the world's roughly 1 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves. For the foreseeable future, the world depends on Mideast oil. Since 1970, there have been some modest supply interruptions but never a catastrophic cutoff of, say, half or all of it. But this remains a possibility?from war, terrorism or revolution?and it would devastate the world economy.

The second problem is that the oil will someday run out. The world now uses about 80 million barrels a day; that's almost 30 billion barrels a year. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects oil demand at 120 million barrels a day in 2030; that's almost 45 billion barrels a year. A lot of oil must be found between now and then. The IEA reckons there's nearly 1 trillion barrels of undiscovered oil, about 70 percent outside the Middle East. But the estimates could be wrong?or the economic and political obstacles too great for anyone to find it.

Now, low prices don't help with either problem. The cheaper the price, the more oil we'll use and the more vulnerable we'd be to a catastrophic shutdown. Low prices also discourage exploration outside the Middle East, because oil elsewhere?in Siberia, offshore Brazil?is more expensive to find and produce. For this reason, low prices would probably be temporary. Rampaging demand would ultimately overtake existing supplies. Prices would shoot up, prompting painful cutbacks.

It's this roller coaster that OPEC wants to avoid. Low prices deprive producer governments of their biggest source of money and, thereby, threaten their existence. Oil instability promotes political instability, which may cause more oil instability.

We have no interest in fostering this cycle among big producers (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Mexico). If OPEC doesn't push prices too high?choking economic growth?producers and consumers share common interests. What's too high? Hard to say. But OPEC's target range ($22 to $28 a barrel) seems reasonable. Prices slightly exceed this now, although after adjusting for inflation, they're lower than in 2000 and much lower than in the 1973-85 period.

The interesting question is how much OPEC controls prices. Until recently, the answer was "not much." Countries cheated on production quotas. But a collapse of prices below $10 in 1998 after the Asian financial crisis was traumatizing. "They [OPEC countries] got more discipline in 2000 and 2001," says oil analyst Adam Sieminski of Deutsche Bank. "They reacted well to the September 11 decline in demand by trimming production." As Sieminski notes, some temporary events?the Iraq war, a strike in Venezuela?have also cut supply and helped OPEC's largest producer, Saudi Arabia, police the market. The longer-run outlook depends heavily on whether rising demand from China and Asia outstrips increases in production.

OPEC is the cartel we love to hate, and no self-interested politician will defy public opinion by admitting we ought to have a shared agenda. But by their silence, government officials behave as if we do. Assuming OPEC shows similar restraint?not trying to move oil to $40 or $45 a barrel?it's a valuable alliance. Unfortunately, it has limits. We still need to be filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve past the goal of 700 million barrels to 1 billion or more. This represents prudent insurance against the ultimate oil horror, which, though it hasn't happened, remains a constant danger.

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: TechnoKid
It'll be a day when we all move to 1.3 litre powered diesel cars like some in Europe.

$1+ per liter gas prices helped Europe realize the wonderfulness of 1.3 liter diesel cars...

If you really want to fight high gas prices use less gas. Park your car, take mass transportation venues, join a car pool, etc.

 

[TheBoyBlunder]

Originally posted by: hdeck
people in europe have been paying these prices for years now. they are all laughing at us.

 

[pdn]

Originally posted by: Narse
Are people really this stupid? I guess so, as many of these chain letters we see posted

Why can't people think for themselves anymore????

Excuse me Narse! I thought it be a good idea to post it in this forum, since this forum seems to be good forum. Stupid you say, well sometimes things just need to be run in to the ground to get the point across.

Originally posted by: ElFenix
damnit this was posted in the last week!

I honestly didn't know that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which thread? Did it have a Poll?
*EDIT* I found the threads but I didn't find any Polls like the one I created as of yet!

 

[miniMUNCH]

I don't drive much so I don't care right now...but it about $1.64 for 87 octane.

Edit: Also...I used to work for Tosco in SoCal and have friends in the oil industry. We need to allow refineries to expand, work with them to build new cleaner refineries...yadda yadda.

Supply and Demand -- it might as well be the forth law of thermodynamics

 

[astroview]

There are benefits to higher gas prices as well.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: pdn

Originally posted by: Narse
Are people really this stupid? I guess so, as many of these chain letters we see posted

Why can't people think for themselves anymore????

Excuse me Narse! I thought it be a good idea to post it in this forum, since this forum seems to be good forum. Stupid you say, well sometimes things just need to be run in to the ground to get the point across.

Uh, what point? The point that you have precisely zero knowledge of how the gasoline market functions?

That E-mail has been circulating for years. It was complete and utter idiotic bullsh!t when it was started. Time has not corrected that fact.

ZV

 

[pdn]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: pdn

Originally posted by: Narse
Are people really this stupid? I guess so, as many of these chain letters we see posted

Why can't people think for themselves anymore????

Excuse me Narse! I thought it be a good idea to post it in this forum, since this forum seems to be good forum. Stupid you say, well sometimes things just need to be run in to the ground to get the point across.

Uh, what point? The point that you have precisely zero knowledge of how the gasoline market functions?

That E-mail has been circulating for years. It was complete and utter idiotic bullsh!t when it was started. Time has not corrected that fact.

ZV

Thank you for your two cents, now here is mine. BTW I kind of understand how the gas market works because all of us that actually drive any type of vehicle see what's going on. It's people like you that don't worry about our economy and just except it without even trying to put in an effort to make it better! I know this email has been circulating for years; I'd rather receive it a hundred times than to not receive it at all. If it?s such a sore subject to you, then why do you keep arguing the point to save a little money? I don?t know about you, but I don?t have a money tree growing in my back yard.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: pdn
Thank you for your two cents, now here is mine. BTW I kind of understand how the gas market works because all of us that actually drive any type of vehicle see what's going on. It's people like you that don't worry about our economy and just except it without even trying to put in an effort to make it better! I know this email has been circulating for years; I'd rather receive it a hundred times than to not receive it at all. If it?s such a sore subject to you, then why do you keep arguing the point to save a little money? I don?t know about you, but I don?t have a money tree growing in my back yard.

There is one problem. The scheme _cannot work_. Period.

All the scheme does, if practiced, is get other stations, stations with less supply than their newfound demand, to raise their prices. The shortage of supply will be rectified by them buying gasoline from alternate suppliers. Suppliers like, you guessed it, Exxon/Mobil. So the "BP" gas you buy at the BP station will then be coming from an Exxon/Mobil refinery. So at the corporate level, Exxon/Mobil will make more money because the stations with artificially high demand will be willing to pay more for the Exxon/Mobil gasoline that they use to cover their shortfalls.

The actual manner in which the market operates is vastly more complex than the ignorant elementary-school level assumptions used in the E-mail. Leave the market to those of us who actually study the market. I'm bloody sick of laymen thinking that reading one E-mail makes them experts on the market.

Just what cardiology research center does the guy named in the E-mail work at anyway? I want to be damn sure never to have anything he worked on performing vital functions in my body.

ZV