keeping the petrol prices down, some US thoery

[ford man xf]

was posted on another forum, thought I would share it, although interesting, I cannot see it working in any country:

This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his
engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the
gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time
to
read this please.

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! It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!


I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by next summer and
it
might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action. 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 on and join with us!


By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super
cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.05 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.

Try to buy from like Kangaroo, BP, Phillip's 66, or Q-Gas.

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 400+ people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (400 x 10 = 4,000) ... and those 4,000 send it to at least ten more
(4,000 x
10 = 40,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth
group of
people, we will have reached over FOUR MILLION consumers.
If those four million get excited and pass this on to ten friends
each,
then 40 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... FOUR 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 400 million and all you have
to do
is send this to 10 people....

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 400 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. I suggest that
we
not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00
RANGE
AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

[ebxr8240]

Good luck...
I have a caltex card....Which one of them are they connected to?

[Yaw]

Originally Posted by ebxr8240

Good luck...
I have a caltex card....Which one of them are they connected to?

Caltex is owned by Chevron, formerly Chevron Texaco

http://www.caltex.com.au/about_facts.asp

And having worked at sevral different brands of servo's the idea will never work due to fleet cars having contracts with brand fuel card. For Instance QLD Gov have BP fuel cards.

[ford man xf]

Originally Posted by Yaw

And having worked at sevral different brands of servo's the idea will never work due to fleet cars having contracts with brand fuel card. For Instance QLD Gov have BP fuel cards.

That's exactly what I thought as well, all the company cars have fuel cards for the major petrol players, so it just couldn't work unfortunately.

[bob^]

Do petrol companies (ie Shell) dig up the oil? or do they buy it?
If they buy it, I can't see it working due to the price of oil per barrel.

[GTpilot]

it may work with the soft drink industry. IE stop bying pepsi and only drink coke. Yeah pepsi will almost be giving their product away.
Really doubt it will work with the oil industry though. They all buy various products from each other anyway.

[Green X]

Originally Posted by jgb

it may work with the soft drink industry. IE stop bying pepsi and only drink coke. Yeah pepsi will almost be giving their product away.
Really doubt it will work with the oil industry though. They all buy various products from each other anyway.

yep that's true, In WA all fuel comes from 2 refinery's BP and Gull. Caltex is the big one in Australia, but hay I got a Caltex card so in WA I fill up but the fuel has probably come from BP or Gull.

crude Oil is blended at the refinery to get the most product out of each barrel anyway, so you may get some light crude from a Chevron well and some heavy from a BP well and all the rest and out of that you get your, PULP,ULP, Diesel grades, kerosene, plastics, Tar and so on.

short of visiting a few oil company CEO's with the sworn off 410 Chopper styles i doubt much will change.

[Bent8]

It's a great idea in theory...but it would only be a temporary fix, if it ever worked.

The real problem is that the US dollar is losing value fast, as more OPEC nations move to the Euro and more fiat money is injected into the stock market to maintain consumer confidence, the prices will continue to rise....ever wondered why there's been a sudden rise in food prices lately???....

Anyway, I won't go into why this is all happening here because it's probably not thread relevant.

[Casablanca]

its just like a chain email lol send to this many ppl who send to this many ppl sorry just the way it sounds to me its a good idea just too much like those email scams getting around.

[S3SR]

I am sending this note to 400+ people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (400 x 10 = 4,000) ... and those 4,000 send it to at least ten more
(4,000 x
10 = 40,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth
group of
people, we will have reached over FOUR MILLION consumers.
If those four million get excited and pass this on to ten friends
each,
then 40 million people will have been contacted!

first flaw - didnt take into consideration the amount of double ups, nor that you would bother sending to 400+ people as most emails wont allow that many at once, and who has that many friends???

second is if the plan fails you only give more money to those companies listed, and again it most likely wont work as most distributers in an area are 1 or 2 companies, which sell for virtually the same...if anything will only make exxon and mobil owned servos hike prices to cover the losses

the only way to do is pay with cash
if your gonna buy $50 fuel, then fill up with $50.02, they cant charge 2cents and if 100 people do it thats $2 they are out by, if 10 000 people do it thats $200 x that by 365 = 73 000 in money they cant charge.... << my theory is better and ive done it everytime i fuel up

even then its the servo that looses, not the big oil companies

I WIN!

[Jayden]

Originally Posted by S3SR

if your gonna buy $50 fuel, then fill up with $50.02, they cant charge 2cents and if 100 people do it thats $2 they are out by, if 10 000 people do it thats $200 x that by 365 = 73 000 in money they cant charge.... << my theory is better and ive done it everytime i fuel up

even then its the servo that looses, not the big oil companies

I WIN!

OMG! i hope your joking.

they covered that .02c by hiking it 52c in the first place. WE LOSE!

The only way is to start up a fordforums.com.au oil industry that will be a self contained untouchable mafia like operation out in the desert with premium shipped to you front door each week. how about it? : ill put in $100 to start it up.

[LTDHO]

Oh my god not this BS again.....

Simple fact IT WILL NOT WORK

Think about it, really......

[desGT]

Saw this one well over a year ago. Doesn't seem to have had any impact. This is just another chain letter.

[sleekism]

There is only ONE way to have cheap petrol.

NATIONALISE THE OIL INDUSTRY.

Australia produces more than enough oil to meet it's needs but currently we are exporting/importing. I say flip the rest of the world off and keep OUR oil for US.

In retrospect perhaps it would be a good idea if Gough Whitlam had nationalised the mining industry back when it was worth nothing.

It would be great to have a nationalised industry but I have a suspicion that the instant we gave the corporations the boot we would have a "coalition" on our doorstep quick smart looking for "weapons of mass destruction".

One more idea:

Open up Antarctica for drilling. Australia owns a nice healthy chunk of an apparently oil rich Antarctica. Only problem is that not many countries recognise it. I envision some wars over Antarctica in current years.

[ltd]

Originally Posted by sleekism

There is only ONE way to have cheap petrol.

NATIONALISE THE OIL INDUSTRY.

Australia produces more than enough oil to meet it's needs but currently we are exporting/importing. I say flip the rest of the world off and keep OUR oil for US.

In retrospect perhaps it would be a good idea if Gough Whitlam had nationalised the mining industry back when it was worth nothing.

It would be great to have a nationalised industry but I have a suspicion that the instant we gave the corporations the boot we would have a "coalition" on our doorstep quick smart looking for "weapons of mass destruction".

One more idea:

Open up Antarctica for drilling. Australia owns a nice healthy chunk of an apparently oil rich Antarctica. Only problem is that not many countries recognise it. I envision some wars over Antarctica in current years.

Couple of problems mate, if we just rely upon our own crude then the price of fuel would be higher. This is for the simple reason that our own light sweet crude does not have enough ingredients such as sulphur content and other products to make it viable. You see, every barrel of crude is able to be cut in to various products such as your distillates, parafins and lubricating oils; light sweet crude is in the lower end of the scale for the amount of cuts available, meaning nominal yields from the aforementioned product. It is all about economies of scale and petroleum products in a way being subsidised by other products. If for example light sweet crude priced at say US$90.00 per barrel is cut to generate product worth say US$150.00 per barrel, whereas a blend of middle eastern, bent and light sweet crude at the same base price returns US$300.00 per barrel; then in simple arithmetic we would be paying almost double for fuel.

Now, most people would say that if we do away with parity pricing (set up by Malcolm Fraser) then we could charge less for a barrel of oil; not true. The simple fact is that whilst companies like BHP make profit on oil, they would be far less inclined to do oil exploration (costs billions) if their profit margins are to be effectively controlled. Also, as an exporter BHP could simply get the OPEC price in other markets and would therefore not sell to Australia. Furthermore, we do not have the capacity to refine our petrol needs as it is, we would need billions in new refineries to make this happen, and frankly there is probably nowhere in this country where a new refinery can be setup without massive protest (we simply do not and have not had a government tough enough to weather the criticism at the ballot box).

Also, the land you refer to in Antarctica claimed as Australian is also claimed by other nations such as France and Japan (which is also why you do not see the navy defending Australian waters against Japanese whalers when we despatch the Navy against people to the north of us.

Finally, the days of cheap crude based products is well and truly over. We will never see petrol cheaper than $1.00 per litre again, we will only see the price get higher and higher. This last lot of fuel increases will bite again in terms of interest rates in this quarter as freight companies increase their fuel services levy which will have an impact on the overall inflation rate.
The only hope we have is alternative fuel such as ethanol, shale oil and hydrogen (problem with hydrogen is the massive amount of electricity needed to produce it, and why Howard wanted nuclear reactors which we will now never see). If you own a 3V V8 220 motor, you should be delighted to know that this engine successfully runs on 90% ethanol in the USA. The engine management already has the programming to decipher the octane rating and mix ratios. The beautiful thing is that the V6 coming into the Falcon in 2010 will have the same capability. All we need to do now is lobby the government to increase available ethanol in fuels and provide an alternative.

On a side note some of you may be interested to know that Air New Zealand in conjunction with Boeing will be conducting a test in the next couple of months with a fully loaded 747-400 flying over 10,000klm on ethanol. In the right conditions (such as inside a rolls royce combustion chamber) ethanol can burn hotter than kerosine, so it will be interesting to see the comparitive fuel economy.

[T3ts50]

Originally Posted by ltd

The beautiful thing is that the V6 coming into the Falcon in 2010 will have the same capability. All we need to do now is lobby the government to increase available ethanol in fuels and provide an alternative.

The only problem with this, is that people have the perception that ethanol is bad for your car.

[sleekism]

Originally Posted by ltd

Couple of problems mate, if we just rely upon our own crude then the price of fuel would be higher. This is for the simple reason that our own light sweet crude does not have enough ingredients such as sulphur content and other products to make it viable. You see, every barrel of crude is able to be cut in to various products such as your distillates, parafins and lubricating oils; light sweet crude is in the lower end of the scale for the amount of cuts available, meaning nominal yields from the aforementioned product. It is all about economies of scale and petroleum products in a way being subsidised by other products. If for example light sweet crude priced at say US$90.00 per barrel is cut to generate product worth say US$150.00 per barrel, whereas a blend of middle eastern, bent and light sweet crude at the same base price returns US$300.00 per barrel; then in simple arithmetic we would be paying almost double for fuel.

Now, most people would say that if we do away with parity pricing (set up by Malcolm Fraser) then we could charge less for a barrel of oil; not true. The simple fact is that whilst companies like BHP make profit on oil, they would be far less inclined to do oil exploration (costs billions) if their profit margins are to be effectively controlled. Also, as an exporter BHP could simply get the OPEC price in other markets and would therefore not sell to Australia. Furthermore, we do not have the capacity to refine our petrol needs as it is, we would need billions in new refineries to make this happen, and frankly there is probably nowhere in this country where a new refinery can be setup without massive protest (we simply do not and have not had a government tough enough to weather the criticism at the ballot box).

Also, the land you refer to in Antarctica claimed as Australian is also claimed by other nations such as France and Japan (which is also why you do not see the navy defending Australian waters against Japanese whalers when we despatch the Navy against people to the north of us.

Finally, the days of cheap crude based products is well and truly over. We will never see petrol cheaper than $1.00 per litre again, we will only see the price get higher and higher. This last lot of fuel increases will bite again in terms of interest rates in this quarter as freight companies increase their fuel services levy which will have an impact on the overall inflation rate.
The only hope we have is alternative fuel such as ethanol, shale oil and hydrogen (problem with hydrogen is the massive amount of electricity needed to produce it, and why Howard wanted nuclear reactors which we will now never see). If you own a 3V V8 220 motor, you should be delighted to know that this engine successfully runs on 90% ethanol in the USA. The engine management already has the programming to decipher the octane rating and mix ratios. The beautiful thing is that the V6 coming into the Falcon in 2010 will have the same capability. All we need to do now is lobby the government to increase available ethanol in fuels and provide an alternative.

On a side note some of you may be interested to know that Air New Zealand in conjunction with Boeing will be conducting a test in the next couple of months with a fully loaded 747-400 flying over 10,000klm on ethanol. In the right conditions (such as inside a rolls royce combustion chamber) ethanol can burn hotter than kerosine, so it will be interesting to see the comparitive fuel economy.

Quite interesting,

I remember reading somewhere that Australian oil refineries can't use Australian oil. We effectively export all our oil production and import for our uses. I do however have a few other solutions.

1)Remove the tax (from memory I think it's around 50 cents excise plus 10% GST)

2)As oil prices increase oil shale could become viable. Where I grew up in Sydney near the Colo river they had an old plant from WW2 which produced petroleum from oil shale. I wonder what oil price will shale become viable.

3)Diesel from Coal. During the second world war the Germans ran tanks on coal dust and I remember watching a documentary on the construction of plants that produce Diesel from Coal. There is certainly no shortage of Coal.

4)Free Public Transport. Why do we pay a few bucks to catch a train. You will get more people on them if you made them free and let texes cover the cost not to mention allowing a greater movement of people and money which helps the economy. Same deal for buses and ferries.

5)Invest in infastructure. Too much money is spent on road construction and maintence. Roads use oil. Lets throw some steel tracks down. Also cities should be planned better so people and goods don't have to commute as much. New York is a good example where the lines between commercial and residential buildings can be effectively blurred.

6)Subsidise Motorcycles. Make the purchase of a motorcycle tax deductible. My GN250 uses 3L per 100kays around town. There are too many cars with only one person.

7)MORE LPG VEHICLES. Australia has abundant reserves of gas yet we are flogging it overseas for next to nothing. Australia already has a hybrid it'scalled the LPG Falcon which will be in doubt in 2010. Subsidise LPG Aussie built cars. Imagine a LPG XR8.

[EgoFG]

A starting point is *always* shopping for price on fuel, and support non-oil based fuels.

I really do not understand all the big development $$ being spent on Hybrids, when with very little mods we could all be running on Australian Grown Alcohol (albeit with some small percentage oil based)

[T3ts50]

Had this guy thought about the electric companies which rely on oil to produce power. This is the main reason oil is so high today. Oil is usually higher in the US winter months because electric companies are demanding more oil to keep the power on due to allot of use of heaters in the US.

[AndyZH]

spam spam spam spam....

[Bossxr8]

The only way to really lower the cost of oil is to reduce the demand, especially since China and India are buying so much they have sent the demand through the roof.

The only real solution is to nuke both India and China to ashes, reducing the demand and forcing the prices back down.

Who's with me, if we send out enough emails and we all get together to force Bush into launching the nukes, oil prices will drop within weeks. :

[Nostalgia]

I cant see prices coming down too soon seeing that the price of crude per barrel hit $100.50 last night. :There is now talk of $1.50 per litre as early as next week.

[T3ts50]

Originally Posted by NostalgEA

I cant see prices coming down too soon seeing that the price of crude per barrel hit $100.50 last night. :There is now talk of $1.50 per litre as early as next week.

Price last night was 1.48 in Vic, so 1.50 next week looks pretty realistic.

[sleekism]

Originally Posted by NostalgEA

I cant see prices coming down too soon seeing that the price of crude per barrel hit $100.50 last night. :There is now talk of $1.50 per litre as early as next week.

Apparently the current prices are equivalent to those during the 70's oil crisis. Who's up for Stagflation???
While fuel is expensive I don't think it should be ridiculously cheap because all we did was waste it. I think $1.20 is a fair price. The thing I hate about petrol prices is it doesn't reflect production costs. At the most it probably costs 40 cents a litre to produce the petrol and get it to the pump. All the rest is tax and PROFIT.

The good thing about the Arabs though is that they are blowing most of the money on Western Goods like expensive cars, yachts, private jets and Caviah etc. The Europeans are loving it with the Arabs spending American Money on European Goods.

As long as they keep spending all the money it's all good. It seems they have a taste for Holden V8's and Aussie Wheat and Livestock. In 50 years time when the oil runs out the poor buggers will be back to living in tents.

[charles_wif_xf]

Originally Posted by NostalgEA

I cant see prices coming down too soon seeing that the price of crude per barrel hit $100.50 last night. :There is now talk of $1.50 per litre as early as next week.

Bugger!

[DJL351]

Originally Posted by AndyZH

spam spam spam spam....

Spam, spam, eggs, bacon, spam beans and spam.

[desGT]

Ethanol - realisation is beginning to dawn that ethanol is not the panacea to our global warming woes. To totally replace fuel, we would need to plant more crop than is currently grown for food in the whole world (add to that the increasing demand from places like China).

But rather than replace current crop (except in a few places like Brazil and sugar cane), countries, particularly the poorer ones, are going to clear areas to plant these new crops for the cash they get, there go the forests again!

To feed the demand, there will be more and more of what is happening in Indonesia with the clearing of tropical forests and then the burning of the undergrowth, the peat bogs, which is releasing a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.

For further reading, try:
Indonesian Peat Burning Emits 1/7'th of Global CO2 (written in 2005!!)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005...esian_peat.php
and sample of articles from New Scientist magazine:
http://space.newscientist.com/search...&query=biofuel

Stay tuned as Governments (are forced into) now starting to realise the true costs and overheads to ethanol as a replacement to oil.

[ford man xf]

What is going to be worse is when OPEC change the currency oil is traded in from USD to the Euro, the US dollar is weak at the moment, if it changes to Euro (currently the AUD buys 59 euro cents) then we are looking at well over $2.00 a litre.

[EBII Fairmont]

I could only see one way of the price really dropping. Thats if the majority of the people who own private vehicles stop using them on a daily basis. Instead driving into the city to go to work, why not catch the train? Let's say 60% of the globes vehicles were all privately owned. If this 60% halved the amount of fuel consumed, it would hit oil companies straight at the pocket and will end up driving the price down due to a huge downfall in demand.

But the chances of everyone in the world halving there consumption will realistically not happen.

[dom_105]

So what is the answer?