Campaign To Reduce Uk Petrol Prices - A Rip-off At

[+Wood Smoke]

You never know it might work!!

 

If you feel you want to try to reduce petrol prices, try the following suggestion :

 

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.

 

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 litre is CHEAP at 77-80p, 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. 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 whimp 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 (e.g. 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 (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 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 per LITRE RANGE

 

ACTION:

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons (75p) Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso.

 

What have you got to lose by trying this????

 

WoodSmoke

[Deego]

I am willing to give it a try. Its getting silly again . I have done nearly 200 miles caching this week and its costing more and more. Most of the nearby caches have been done and the rest normaly involve a 80 - 100 mile around trip, So I must use £40 plus per month in fuel for caching alone

 

I have just filled up with diesel at 82.9p per ltr at Tesco. I do normaly use Esso(83.5p)

 

Lets hope it works

Brian

[+Cave Troll and Eeyore]

Worth a try.

I only ever buy diesel from Sainsburys or Asda.

[+Seasider]

 

What a load of nonsense!

 

That will have no effect on petrol prices because...

 

1) Petrol price of 84p (as it is currently here) is made up of 18p cost of production, 61p in taxes and just 5p to cover retail costs. Therefore it costs 79p just to get it to the pump.

 

2) The large profits of the oil companies come from production not retailing where profits are small and the largest contribution comes from selling non petrol items such as sandwhiches, crisps, papers, pop etc etc.

 

3) This is the key one - The retail & production arms of the oil giants are seperate companies within the group and are prevented by law from cross subsidising. BP RETAIL Co. is not the same as BP PRODUCTION Co. The production arm cannot sell petrol to the retail arm at a discount.

 

4) The retail arm buys its petrol from the production arm but the production arm can wholesale excess on the open market. The production arm is not bothered who it sells its product to - it gets the same open market rate whether BP Retail buys it or Sainsbury's buys it.

 

5) Therefore, if no-one bought petrol from BP all that would happen is that the retail arm would stop selling petrol (low profit) and concentrate on becoming grocery outlets (like Tesco Extra) where profits are good. The seperate production arm would simply sell its petrol on the wholsesale market to other buyers (Shell, Texaco etc) who are not producing enough at the same 18p it does now. There is a shortage of oil and selling refined products is easy. No overall loss to the group - no reduction in fuel prices.

 

The only way to lower fuel prices is to lobby the government to reduce the 61p in taxes we pay not sit in a pub dreaming up daft schemes!

 

And of course, there are only about 30 million drivers in the country so who is Phil going to send the other 270 million e-mails to?!!

 

Cheers!

 

Seasider

 

[EDIT - for typo]

Edited May 28, 2004 by Seasider

[+Pengy&Tigger]

Hmmm. Which company does Philip Hollsworth work for? Could it possibly be Shell, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, or Jet?

 

I agree that fuel is too high but I believe that it is the government who need to be lobbied, as tax is the biggest chunk of the price of fuel.

 

Having said that, it is more sensible to buy your fuel from supermarkets, and avoid the likes of Esso and BP where it is usually more expensive anyway.

 

Tigger

[+Cave Troll and Eeyore]

Thanks for the insight seasider.

Looks like we'll have to try letters to the government then.

I won't hold my breath though !

[Lactodorum]

Yes it might work but surely this isn't the place to be circulating what looks suspiciously like a chail letter.

 

Let's keep discussions related more or less to Geocaching.