Petrol price “boycotts"
This is more a rant than a useful, informative post… You’ve been warned. I also originally posted it on Tumblr, so you may have read it before.
Over the last few weeks as petrol prices head up, I’ve noticed a few groups on Facebook claiming that if you don’t buy petrol for one day, the petrol companies will notice, and drop their prices. The latest one claims that it’s not a “don’t buy petrol” boycott (it actually is), and that we can get petrol back to $1 per litre.
I just have one question for all of these groups/boycotts/crazy people - what do you actually think this is going to achieve? I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. The days of $1-1.50 petrol are over. Oil is a finite resource. They’re not making more of it in a big factory somewhere. They’re not finding huge new reserves of the stuff anymore. And us humans are using more of it than ever before. Cross that with the unrest in Libya (who make some awesome crude) and the weakening New Zealand dollar, and it’s not looking good.
The original boycotts worked by basically saying “Don’t buy petrol on this day”. Uh, yeah, great, what happens when you’re tank’s empty though, say a few days later? You go to the petrol station, and fill up. The petrol companies know this. They also know that the grandma who pops in every week without fail isn’t going to be in on some Facebook shenanigans. So they’re not at all bothered by the original “boycotts”.
In fact, they’re probably laughing at everyone who clicks that ‘Attending’ button.
The latest one (in the first picture) strikes me as the most ambitious (stupid) though.
Boycott one petrol company (BP in this case) in the hope that they will first actually notice, and then lower their prices, which is supposed to bring down the prices of all the other companies. There are currently 6,774 people “attending” this effort, if you can call it that, on Facebook. Now I think it’s safe enough to say that a group of those people don’t actually own cars, so say that 2,000 of them don’t buy petrol from BP for a few weeks (until they forget about it, or get bored and find a new group to join) - BP still has its regulars. And it still has a large number of corporate fuel card holders.
People seem to think that getting oil out of the ground is cheap and easy. Have you ever tried digging a hole thousands of feet into the ground, in the middle of the ocean, in the hope that you might hit oil? Didn’t think so. It takes years of planning, searching and development to find it. And that’s only to get it out of the ground. It still has to be floated around the world on a huge ship, refined into petrol (or diesel, if you swing that way) at a refinery, and then shipped out on another huge ship, to petrol stations. They’re doing this all for $2.20 a litre.
Actually, that’s a lie. The petrol companies only see around half of that. Most of it goes to the government in GST, emission trading schemes and other taxes. The importer gets some of that as well of course, and the shipping company.
I even made a pretty graph (all good “arguments” need graphs, right?)
(Data from here)
So basically, the oil company is doing ALL of that work for you, for around $1.10 a litre. Yes they used to be able to do it for less, but, as I said above, times have changed, and things are a little tougher now.
Don’t want to pay so much for petrol? Catch the bus, ride that bike you’ve had in the shed for years, walk, swim, hop on one leg… So many other options! Why not spend the time you’re wasting arguing on Facebook doing something useful? The world would appreciate it more.
Me? I’m going to fill up with some nice juicy petrol from BP. I might even go a little go a little crazy and splash out on some premium fuel…