Don't buy gas on 5/15!

Anybody else get this e-mail? I also saw this on the news...


Don't pump gas on may 15th.

In April, 1997, there was a "gas out" conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.

On May 15th, 2007 all internet users are asked to not go to a gas station and pump gas in protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places.

There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the internet network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up.

If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,292,000,000.00 (that's almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companies pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the middle eastern oil industry for at least one day.

If you agree (and I can't see why you wouldn't) resend this to everyone on your contact list with it saying ''Don't pump gas on May 15th".

Just got a text about it! Crazy #'s!!! :eek:

*twitches and goes off to vent anger on something small and helpless*
I am so tired of this thing.

Is it wrong of me to point out the price you find so bad is less than half of what everyone pays over here and that the company will make the money back the next day when everyone "catches up" on their petrol? :bolt:
If the petrol not bought is an actual reduction in sales over the week then I am all for it and can you put in a good word for british prices too?


dr del

that totally won't work. the only way to even make an impact would be to not buy from a specific company... like esso for example for a month. that would start gas wars and prices would go down temporarily.

i agree with derek and that was my response when i was told about it... they just make the money the day before or the day after!

Bogus.

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Originally Posted by xdeus

Bogus.

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You beat me to it.

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Originally Posted by recycling goddess

that totally won't work. the only way to even make an impact would be to not buy from a specific company... like esso for example for a month. that would start gas wars and prices would go down temporarily.

i agree with derek and that was my response when i was told about it... they just make the money the day before or the day after!

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Is it still Esso in Canaduh or is it Exxon?

They had this on the news again today. I still find it so hard to believe that people still think a "gas out day" will do anything at all. Its ridiculous! So what if you need gas and got it yesterday or tomorrow your still using the same amount as you would have. Even if for one day the oil profits did feel anything the day before or after would be that much better for them.

If people want to try and fight prices the focus needs to be on certain companies (as mentioned above)...or more importantly change driving habits. Everyone should get motorcycles and scooters! LOL I ride mine all summer long to work and it does save us some money. We are actually looking at purchasing a 180cc scooter for my wife to use when she doesn't need a vehicle with 4 wheels.

On the news this morning they where talking about how a gas out day, if any affect was had it would probably push prices higher...not lower. By throwing off the "balance" of the industry it would likely drive prices up more rather than lower them as any irregularity causes price increases.

I agree wth Del. :)

Prices are at 2.89 per gal unleaded.

this is a ridiculous price but I don't think 1 day is going to make an impact at all. Maybe they would lose a couple dollars...but will they really?

a week would make a bigger impact!

But seriously...who is gonna do that!

I know I can't! I have errands to run and kids to tote around.

Although...I didn't plan on this, I did get my gas yesterday so I don' need any today!

Its sad how many people buy into crap like this - just goes to show that the majority of people out there don't know anything about economics.

Gas prices are a function of supply, demand, and speculation. A "gas out day" does nothing to affect gas prices - you'll still drive your car to work that day, and the next, and the next...and you'll still need gas to put in it.

If everyone REALLY wants to affect gas prices...do things like car pool or take public transportation or plan your errands so you drive less or drive more fuel efficient cars. Anyone who knows anything about economics knows that assuming a constant supply, lowering demand lowers the price every time.

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Originally Posted by TekWarren

Everyone should get motorcycles and scooters! LOL

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:colbert: Florida has Love Bugs


http://www.nathanledet.com/bugteeth.jpg

I don't do gas outs. They still get their money some other day. I just re-evaluate my driving habits when prices go up. Instead of a trip out to the store, I stop on my way to or from work now. Instead of going on road trips antique shopping I shop locally. When prices are high I entertain myself with long walks with the dogs or work around the house on projects i never seem to have time for. Those are the things that hurt their pocket book in the long run. If you actually cut gas use on a daily basis, thereby using much less thru the year, that's what hurts them.

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Originally Posted by nathanledet

:colbert: Florida has Love Bugs

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LOL! yea they do!

somebody I knew when I lived in Florida put someone elses tags on their car and went to the store and on his way back he got pulled over when the cop asked this guy if he knew what he pulled him over for he said "No..I was doing the speed limit and I used my signal..." and the cop replied..."yea but you have love bugs all over your rear tags and you can't get them there unless you were driving up the highway in reverse!" LOL! So the cop knew he had put somebody's front tag on the rear of his car! lol!


busted for Lovebugs! :rofl:

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

Its sad how many people buy into crap like this - just goes to show that the majority of people out there don't know anything about economics.

Gas prices are a function of supply, demand, and speculation. A "gas out day" does nothing to affect gas prices - you'll still drive your car to work that day, and the next, and the next...and you'll still need gas to put in it.

If everyone REALLY wants to affect gas prices...do things like car pool or take public transportation or plan your errands so you drive less or drive more fuel efficient cars. Anyone who knows anything about economics knows that assuming a constant supply, lowering demand lowers the price every time.

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Just wanted to add a second chance for people to read this if they missed it the first time. A nation wide boycott of BP and Exxon companies would help, as would car pooling and taking public transportation. Skipping a day of purchasing, while using the same amount as usual, won't change anything.

$2.89 per gal. Lucky! It's like $3.39 here in Chicago. I have been looking at scooters and mopeds, too, along with bad-@$$ helmets (Viking, Keiser, Black Spangenhelm, etc.) so I still look tough on it.

lol wow I was gonna get gas today but just thought :rolleyes: "DID I EAT TODAY? so I skipped on gas till tommorow.

Didn't affect prices here at all.

Gas prices never dropped here either, but they did drop $0.03 the day before, probably to counter any drop in sales.

It went up $0.20 today...should have bought it yesterday :(


We are now $3.34!!!:taz:

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Originally Posted by Purrrfect9

Gas prices never dropped here either, but they did drop $0.03 the day before, probably to counter any drop in sales.

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Nah, I promise you, the 3 cent drop had nothing to do with any "gas-out" or similar type of boycott.

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Originally Posted by PythonWallace

Just wanted to add a second chance for people to read this if they missed it the first time. A nation wide boycott of BP and Exxon companies would help,

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Boycotting Exxon or other Big Gas is another ill-informed idea of how to lower gas prices. I wish the answer could be that simple...

Do some research, the info is out there and pretty easy to find. Its not like some exec from Exxon is sitting as his desk thinking, "Hmm, what will gas be today?" The price of gas has to do with taxes, distribution costs, refining capacity, speculation on supply, and the price of crude on the world market.

Boycotting big oil will NOT affect gas prices. We would still consume, or demand, the same amount and would just have to get it elsewhere.

gas got over $3/gal here. guess this was a load of crap, as predicted :rolleyes:

The state of TX is considering legislation that will revoke the state sales tax on gasoline for the heavy travel months of June, July, and Aug. That'll drop the price by .20 a gallon....if it happens.

This stuff cracks me up.

Like it will do anything.

These companies are ran by gabillionaires. It wont affect them.

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Originally Posted by JLC

The state of TX is considering legislation that will revoke the state sales tax on gasoline for the heavy travel months of June, July, and Aug. That'll drop the price by .20 a gallon....if it happens.

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See...seeing/hearing stuff like that makes me lose even more confidence in our legislators and their ignorance to economic principles.

Voting to get rid of the gas tax might pull the price down...but in the end it will be a temporary fix to a bigger problem - just another round of "feel-good" legislation for incumbant canidates to win over votes. Still like this is all politics, and no brains.

So, they get rid of the gas tax, and gas goes down 20 cents a gallon overnight. Suddenly everyone starts consuming gas again like its 20 cents cheaper...then in september, as a result of the increased demand of gasoline over the summer months at the reduced price, gas suddenly goes back up HIGHER than what it might have been had they just kept the tax in place and let the price go where it would go naturally.

Basically, you reduce gas by 20 cents in June to guarantee a 40-50 cent overnight increase in september. Talk about wallet-shock...
Again, just another stroke of pure genious by our law-makers. :salute:

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

See...seeing/hearing stuff like that makes me lose even more confidence in our legislators and their ignorance to economic principles.

Voting to get rid of the gas tax might pull the price down...but in the end it will be a temporary fix to a bigger problem - just another round of "feel-good" legislation for incumbant canidates to win over votes. Still like this is all politics, and no brains.

So, they get rid of the gas tax, and gas goes down 20 cents a gallon overnight. Suddenly everyone starts consuming gas again like its 20 cents cheaper...then in september, as a result of the increased demand of gasoline over the summer months at the reduced price, gas suddenly goes back up HIGHER than what it might have been had they just kept the tax in place and let the price go where it would go naturally.

Basically, you reduce gas by 20 cents in June to guarantee a 40-50 cent overnight increase in september. Talk about wallet-shock...
Again, just another stroke of pure genious by our law-makers. :salute:

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Agreed 100%.

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

See...seeing/hearing stuff like that makes me lose even more confidence in our legislators and their ignorance to economic principles.

Voting to get rid of the gas tax might pull the price down...but in the end it will be a temporary fix to a bigger problem - just another round of "feel-good" legislation for incumbant canidates to win over votes. Still like this is all politics, and no brains.

So, they get rid of the gas tax, and gas goes down 20 cents a gallon overnight. Suddenly everyone starts consuming gas again like its 20 cents cheaper...then in september, as a result of the increased demand of gasoline over the summer months at the reduced price, gas suddenly goes back up HIGHER than what it might have been had they just kept the tax in place and let the price go where it would go naturally.

Basically, you reduce gas by 20 cents in June to guarantee a 40-50 cent overnight increase in september. Talk about wallet-shock...
Again, just another stroke of pure genious by our law-makers. :salute:

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I agree !! But I doubt it will take till September to show back up. The increase in driving (caused by the sudden price drop) will again cause shortages and drive the price back up.

see i disagree with the gas out because it will do no good. look at it this way no buys gas for one day ok what has that done nothing everyone will have to buy tomarrow so thay hurt for a day. that be like you bumping your toe it would hurt for a little but not long. now if everyone could go a month with oout buying gas that would hurt them it would be like cutting off your toe.

If everyone did things that would only necessitate going to the gas pump once a month, then MOST CERTAINLY gas prices would go down...but it wouldn't be because the oil companies were "hurting," it would be because demand would be drastically reduced.

For the umpteenth time...OIL COMPANIES DO NOT DETERMINE THE PRICE OF GAS.

If you need someone to blame...blame OPEC. They control the majority of the supply of crude oil on the world market, one of the major determinants of the price of gasoline.

regardless if it does anything or not, im not paying $3.30 for gas, and its all over the news and all over my building, so it may not hit as hard as they say, but im sure it will make some impact. its only one day of not buying gas, is it really that hard to do?

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

If you need someone to blame...blame OPEC.

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I would suggest you blame Mother Nature too. All the hurricane damaged a lot of the refineries in the Gulf and that currently is the biggest bottleneck in getting more gas to meet the demand.

Its not like most people buy gas every day as it is...the discussion isn't about whether its "not possible" to not fill up on one day, but about the flawed logic of staging one day to abstain from buying gas...I guess for someone that fills up once a week, the other 313 days a year are gas-out days then ;)

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Originally Posted by lord jackel

I would suggest you blame Mother Nature too. All the hurricane damaged a lot of the refineries in the Gulf and that currently is the biggest bottleneck in getting more gas to meet the demand.

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Refining capacity is a huge issue. New refineries haven't been built since the 70s...oil companies have no incentive to increase refining capacity.

Think about it - people are still paying the astronomical prices for gas and oil companies, as a result, are realizing astronomical profits.

Only when gas prices rise so high that it begins to curb the demand in a significant way and the reduced revenue starts to put a squeeze on the oil companies, they may consider expanding refining capacity to a level that brings the price down and demand back up to a more desirable level.

Who knows when that could be. How high do gas prices have to go before people start making lifestyle changes - $5? $7? $10?

If you want to look into a crystal ball...look at Europe. They've been paying $5-7 a gallon since the late 90s and there, they utilize public transportation and fuel efficient cars much more than we do. The proplem with the U.S., and always has been the problem, is that we're so much bigger and with sprawling suburban areas outside the reach of efficient public transportation, personal automobiles are the only way to get around. Its a problem that will need to be addressed in the future.

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Originally Posted by elevatethis

Its not like most people buy gas every day as it is...the discussion isn't about whether its "not possible" to not fill up on one day, but about the flawed logic of staging one day to abstain from buying gas...I guess for someone that fills up once a week, the other 313 days a year are gas-out days then ;)

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I would only be affecting if you shut down every thing that burns a petrolium based fuel, cars, truck, trains, 18 wheelers, farms, ships, electrical plants everything for say a month or two then they might get a little bit of a message. Maybe

what gets me is we have all kinds of other sources we can use a fuel, they have hydro cars, solar power (however this is actually really unrealistic), Hybrids, and a few others I forget. The solar power is unrealistic till they devise more efficient panels to gather energy, although one company is close to making it pretty reasonable, but currently an entire car has to be covered in panels and gets REALLY hot. yet we dont use any of these fuels, we keep using gas. the hydro power actually takes the hydrocarbons from the air and with manless stations turns it into a fuel. There was a huge show on it on the discovery channel that made me asking why the hell we arent using it consider they have a car that runs on it, and a station that is fully functional and requires no workers......

and dont give the supply and demand speech, Alaska is nothing but pure oil, but we turned it into a national park, so now we cant touch any of it. The oil in the mid east is still in plenty quanities, they just want more money, and its rediculous. We have the means to not use normal gas, and use fuels FAR FAR MORE cheaper, yet we dont.

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Originally Posted by SnakeEyes

what gets me is we have all kinds of other sources we can use a fuel, they have hydro cars, solar power (however this is actually really unrealistic), Hybrids, and a few others I forget. The solar power is unrealistic till they devise more efficient panels to gather energy, although one company is close to making it pretty reasonable, but currently an entire car has to be covered in panels and gets REALLY hot. yet we dont use any of these fuels, we keep using gas. the hydro power actually takes the hydrocarbons from the air and with manless stations turns it into a fuel. There was a huge show on it on the discovery channel that made me asking why the hell we arent using it consider they have a car that runs on it, and a station that is fully functional and requires no workers......

and dont give the supply and demand speech, Alaska is nothing but pure oil, but we turned it into a national park, so now we cant touch any of it. The oil in the mid east is still in plenty quanities, they just want more money, and its rediculous. We have the means to not use normal gas, and use fuels FAR FAR MORE cheaper, yet we dont.

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Saw a car that ran on water. It was based on a hydrogen power plant. the guy even had a cutting torch that you could touch the flame of..

See this is for lack of a better word Bad Ass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU

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Originally Posted by SnakeEyes

and dont give the supply and demand speech,

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If you don't subscribe to economic truths like supply and demand, participating in this discussion would be like a monkey assisting in a liver transplant.

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Originally Posted by SnakeEyes

Alaska is nothing but pure oil, but we turned it into a national park, so now we cant touch any of it. The oil in the mid east is still in plenty quanities, they just want more money, and its rediculous. We have the means to not use normal gas, and use fuels FAR FAR MORE cheaper, yet we dont.

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Agreed...there is a huge oil reserve in Alaska. However, put on you "oil company" hat for a minute. People are still paying $3-4 a gallon for gas and will continue to do so well into the $6-7 / gal range, IMO, why would an oil company, at the present, want to invest billions upon billions of dollars into tapping that reserve?

Harvesting crude is not as simple as digging a hole in the ground and letting the well flow...its incredibly capital-intensive, and there's absolutely no economic reason to do so until the price of crude as it is reaches a level where the price significantly curbs demand and starts to chip away at the oil companies' future profits.

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Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

Saw a car that ran on water. It was based on a hydrogen power plant. the guy even had a cutting torch that you could touch the flame of..

See this is for lack of a better word Bad Ass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU

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thats also one of them, they say it could be possible to have a "powerplant" in your home that can turn normal water into the fuel for your car, cause all it does is rearranges the atoms that makes up H2O, or adds a hydrocarbon, or something like that, yet you never see it anywhere or hear anything else about it? makes ya wonder where all these special cars, fuels, and designs go after they are made...

Anyone else live in a college town? I'm at Purdue (W. Lafayette, IN). When you wanna take a road trip or head home, you've got to buy gas on your way out of town. That'll run you a cool 3.39/gal at least. But that's ok, college kids or loaded so it's ok to screw us :P

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Originally Posted by SnakeEyes

thats also one of them, they say it could be possible to have a "powerplant" in your home that can turn normal water into the fuel for your car, cause all it does is rearranges the atoms that makes up H2O, or adds a hydrocarbon, or something like that, yet you never see it anywhere or hear anything else about it? makes ya wonder where all these special cars, fuels, and designs go after they are made...

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Yep. I have a friend who's uncle, well over a decade ago, invented an engine that gets over a hundred miles per gallon. He drove a car from Texas to Chicago using only 7 gallons of gas. As soon as he applied for patents he had a knock on his door. A couple of suits made him an offer for the patents that he couldn't refuse. He's never heard or seen his design after that day. He's one of the head engineers for a major auto maker. The technology exists for all kinds of things that would cause oil and gas corporations to be forced to stop raping us. It's too bad they own the patents to them.

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Originally Posted by nebby3103

Anyone else live in a college town? I'm at Purdue (W. Lafayette, IN). When you wanna take a road trip or head home, you've got to buy gas on your way out of town. That'll run you a cool 3.39/gal at least. But that's ok, college kids or loaded so it's ok to screw us :P

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I don't live in a college town, but reg. unleaded is $3.69+ today here.

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Originally Posted by PythonWallace

Yep. I have a friend who's uncle, well over a decade ago, invented an engine that gets over a hundred miles per gallon. He drove a car from Texas to Chicago using only 7 gallons of gas. As soon as he applied for patents he had a knock on his door. A couple of suits made him an offer for the patents that he couldn't refuse. He's never heard or seen his design after that day. He's one of the head engineers for a major auto maker. The technology exists for all kinds of things that would cause oil and gas corporations to be forced to stop raping us. It's too bad they own the patents to them.

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hahah, was reading somewhere about all the oil companies owning all the patents to this stuff..... :8: :8: Thats just funny. Ever hear of Aquagen? No? thats cause it was made about 1-2 years ago and is a car that completely runs on normal water, saw a news report on it, never saw it again.....

It's all about money. :(

It's a little late now, but why would not getting $30 of gas on one day effect anything. I'd just have to pump $35 the the next day. Besides most people don't burn a tank of gas every day, so it really doesn't make any since to me to not get what makes your mode of transportation to work go.