I got the same e-mail from a friend - so I'm forwarding my response to all of you:
"Tony -
You do realize that this will only hurt the retailers who already own the gas and have it sitting in the tanks at the station. The Oil companies have millions of gallons of gas stockpiled - they sell to brokers, who sell to distributors, who then sell to retailers. You would have to NOT BUY (IE NOT DRIVE) for months before the oil companies felt anything - then they in turn would respond to the reduction in demand by not producing as much (which by the way is actually cheaper for them so the cost per gallon goes down and they make more $) and we end up paying even more because of the lack of supply. 8th grade economics.
This tactic is short sited and uninformed. The actual effect is that if nobody bought gas for one day - they would still drive, and there would be a sales surge on the 14th. and 16th, and probably many stations out of gas on the 16th because of it - this only creates a loss of revenue to the retailer because they have no product to sell. The oil companies wouldn't notice the impact at all on the bottom line at the end of the week much less the month or year. The almost 2.3 billion loss - is inaccurate - even if nobody bought bought gas for a day - and didn't drive or burn any so they never replaced it the loss to the oil companies would be less than 5% of that 2.3 billion which is negligible to such a large industry.
Want to reduce our dependance on oil - get rid of your SUV and truck, and buy a fuel efficient car or even just car pool. If everyone carpooled with just one other person there would be 1/2 the commuter traffic. Not only would we burn 1/2 the gas, with half the traffic it would be a more efficient drive and we'd save there. Think of the savings in environmental factors with only half the cars on the road each day....
Bottom line - It's a consumer driven market. and as long as we're buying - they're selling for a profit. And who can blame them - that's what companies do, MAKE MONEY.
While I'm off the deep end here; to ask an oil company to invest in alternative fuels is ridiculous... Think about it - hypothetically lets say you have been a shoe maker for years and have made a profitable business out of it. Shoes are something everyone needs and they've been around for centuries. One day the government comes along and says - you make too much money - you need to invest it in finding an alternative to shoes. What are you going to tell uncle sam? I doubt you'd say, "Oh sure - we make money selling shoes but we'll certainly find an alternative for everyone to switch to."
Dave"
My 2cents
