Petrol Prices

MrMarvellous

Hi there,

As I am sure many of you know the increase in petrol prices has been in the news this week, with prices in some areas set to reach £1 per litre. Well, rather interestingly I received an email from a work college today which had a plan in to try to force companies to drop there prices.

Now, personally I think it is a good idea but I would be interested in knowing what others think.

We are hitting 95p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with
paying £1 a liter. Philip Hollsworth 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 in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think
that the cost of a liter is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to
teach them that BUYERS control the market place 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. 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 a lot of 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 MILLIONPEOPLE!!!
Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (and not
buy at ESSO/BP) 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 8days!!! 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 It's
easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at
Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso

Kind regards


Martin Baker
Countrywide Signs Ltd

Do people think this would get us cheaper petrol prices in the long run?

Do we have a moral imperative not to put pressure on companies to reduce prices like this or is it in fact our moral duty?

Is this something that forum members might want to participate in?

Finally, I did think this was the best heading to put this post under, after all it is about saving money even though it is something where action would be required in the form of a consumer group. I apologise if this is in the wrong place but it is my first time here.

I look forward to hearing peoples opinions.

Poppycat

This has been going round for years it wont work, its just another chain letter

MrMarvellous

Ah right, I'd not seen it before.

roddydogs

Most of the price is Tax, so the government reduces the tax

---

What taxes would you like to go up to replace the shortfall.............

MrMarvellous

Sorry, but it wasn't being suggested that the government be petitioned just a few of the more traditional chains boycotted with the intention of getting them to lower prices.

It's true that tax makes up a large portion of the amount spent on petrol but that petrol is still being sold by companies who are making millions each year in prophet. It occurs to me that if it was the company its self that was taking the hit each time we had a rise in fuel duty then more serious questions would be asked to the government by people with the capitol to perhaps hold some weight in the argument.

goshdarnit

roddydogs wrote: »

Most of the price is Tax, so the government reduces the tax

---

What taxes would you like to go up to replace the shortfall.............

I'd actually like to see the government do something about the amount of money wasted on their watch. This would save billions and reduce the need to overtax us.

vikingaero

MrMarvellous wrote: »

It's true that tax makes up a large portion of the amount spent on petrol but that petrol is still being sold by companies who are making millions each year in prophet. It occurs to me that if it was the company its self that was taking the hit each time we had a rise in fuel duty then more serious questions would be asked to the government by people with the capitol to perhaps hold some weight in the argument.

At the current moment in time the taxes on fuels represent about 80% of the price at the pump. When that email was written the talk of 69p a litre seems very attractive.

Here's why the email won't work:

(1) There are a finite amount of oil refineries in the UK

BP Grangemouth
BP Stanford Le Hope, Essex
Carless, Harwich
Conoco, Grimsby
Eastman, Ellesmere Port
Elf, Milford Haven
Esso, Fawley
Lindsay, Grimsby
Llandarcy, Swansea
Nynas, Dundee
Phillips, Middlesboro
Shell, Ellesmere & Stanford Le Hope
Texaco, Pembroke

(2) Transport costs are one of the primary distribution costs. Esso only has a refinery near Southampton so they are not going to have a tanker drive up to Esso petrol stations in Scotland. What they will do is obtain fuel from BP Grangemouth. Similarly where BP stations are geographically closer to other refineries then a reciprocal agreement exists.

(3) So if you boycott Esso petrol stations, then demand will shift from the Esso filling stations to other brands. So Esso will simply send the tankers to the Shell/BP/Tesco/Sainsburys etc stations instead. The net result is that they sell the same amount of fuel whether you buy from them or not!

Biggles

vikingaero wrote: »

When that email was written the talk of 69p a litre seems very attractive.

When the email was originally written, at least 6 or 7 years ago, it was in US cents, which is why the 'anglicised' version is full of errors, eg Esso & BP aren't the same company but the guy who converted it didn't know the names of the UK companies! Lame in the extreme!

bunnymad

vikingaero wrote: »

(1) There are a finite amount of oil refineries in the UK
Conoco, Grimsby

(2) Transport costs are one of the primary distribution costs.

I wonder how come the petrol station opposite Conoco is one of the most expensive in the region? Iirc it has a direct line running under the road from the refinery. I've never understood that

loofer

The concept behind it... even at the time it was originally produced.. is a good one. The only problem is getting the message out to people and getting them to commit to it.
Don't forget some peple insist on paying a premium for high octane fuel such as BP Ultimate and Shell V Max. Weather that has any effect on performance/economy/engine durability is another matter.

Isn't MoneySaving Expert about 'screwing the companies that have for years screwed us'... or something like that.

Consumerism = equals consumer power but we lack organisation. Boycotting works but only on a large scale.

The snag is that the vast majority of the price of petrol is duty/VAT. Any such boycott would only force companies to reduce by about 2p. You have to remeber that the cost of a barrel of oil has significantly increased sharply over the last 10 years.

That way the the government heavily influences the price of fuel and it's usage. Let's be honest about the green issue here, we need to get more cars off the roads (this is coming from somebody who uses his car for commuting a 76 mile trip daily). Yes I also understand the case for a viable public transport alternative (including promoting car share).

nobblyned

Probably the miscontrived thing I've ever read. Just an excuse for a chain letter.

Even if we ignore the whole fungibility of the market, the weakness still lies in the main tenet of the arguement -

"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."

Why would the other companies have to cut prices when they have all the customers?