No Petrol Wednesday

[SCR34M3R]

Just received this vai e-mail, so thought i'd jump on the bandwagon!

MAY 26 is NO PETROL WEDNESDAY. Join the one day nationwide boycott and help give the message that we strongly oppose the current and on going increase in the price of PETROL. Buy FUEL today, Thursday or any other day but not Wednesday. Pass this on to family and friends. Thanks for your help! More below...

IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE IN AUSTRALIA DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF PETROL FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES.

AT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD HIT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY WITH A NET LOSS OF OVER 4.6 BILLION DOLLARS WHICH AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINES OF THE OIL COMPANIES.

THEREFORE MAY 26TH HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "WE WON'T TOLERATE IT AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF PETROL THAT DAY.

THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT.

WAITING ON THIS ADMINSTRATION TO STEP IN AND CONTROL THE PRICES IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REDUCTION AND CONTROL IN PRICES THAT THE ARAB NATIONS PROMISED TWO WEEKS AGO?

REMEMBER ONE THING, NOT ONLY IS THE PRICE OF PETROL GOING UP BUT AT THE SAME TIME AIRLINES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES, TRUCKING COMPANIES ARE FORCED TO RAISE THEIR PRICES WHICH EFFECTS PRICES ON EVERYTHING THAT IS SHIPPED. THINGS LIKE FOOD, CLOTHING, BUILDING MATERIALS, MEDICAL SUPPLIES ETC. WHO PAYS IN THE END? WE DO!

WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. IF THEY DON'T GET THE MESSAGE AFTER ONE DAY, WE WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

SO DO YOUR PART AND SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND MAKE MAY 26TH A DAY THAT THE CITIZENS OF AUSTRALIA SAY "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH"

[browny]

sounds like a load of bs to me.

[predator]

how about Most Misunderstood Issue of How the Petrochemical Industry Works Day..

MMIOHTPIWD

[Messiah]

ok i may be a little ahead of myself... but wont this just burn the petrol stations?

i mean it would work like this right... mr blow at bp has had a good week with alot of business and moves say 50000 ltrs (just picking a random number) so he decides to buy 75000 this week to see if he can sell more, the truck comes in and he's billed for his 75000ltrs.

All of a sudden no one shows up and he's overstocked by a few 10's of thousands of ltrs and then has to hoik his price up again to cover the outlay for the fuel that he thought he could sell.

we come back on thurs and low and behold the fuel is even more expensive cos he has to make back his investment by bill time.

if you wanna hurt the petro chemical industry do the following.

dont buy anything plastic.

stop buy any motor oils

dont paint yr hours or anything else.

dont buy some medicines.

infact just stop buying everything, its all linked.

That way we can feck over a majority of industries they will go broke and be unable to restock, the petrochem comps will go broke too and weyhey! the economy comes crashing down.

ok more than a little exagerated but u get the idea.

The prices we see are due to GLOBAL MARKET FORCES.

Jibbing yr local servo will only screw over the owners. All the people further up the tree already have their money, and trust me they're not going to complain about having a few more barrels on hand to sell to people who truely are deperate for it and will pay top dollar

[SCR34M3R]

good point Messiah i just got it in a email and thought it sounded good but by reading ur post sounds crap now

[predator]

Oil production is controlled by a very small number of powerful Middle Eastern Countries and a limited number of very powerful players sit on OPEC.

They basically decide, at their bequest (and strength of whining of the americans and West in general at that particular point, and what the americans can do for them) how many millions of barrels of oil are released onto the market.

If the supply is reduced (just to punish the americans, or play mouse with the world economy through flow through countless effects) the price of oil goes up. This in turn the petrol companies (Shell, BP, etc) decide how much petrol they are going to sell, based on their current reserves, or how much they are going to charge to the market.

This is released to all the local service stations around the country, with various alterations for local area, allowance for government exises, etc. The petrol stations, say "Station X" will buy xxx Litres, and set a price, a cent or two profit above this to go to running their store and paying the staff. A few hours pass while Station X happily sells their petrol and draws customers.

Station Y over the road seeing all these customers go elsewhere will go "ok, i'll drop my price 2c/L over these guys at Station X to get a few more customers". Station Y makes the same price at -2c/L due to increased volume and customers through the store.

Station X then realises "hey we're losing too many customers, i'll go match Y and maybe drop it by 1c". Everybody goes back to stationX.

This process ping pongs around through the day, and week, until it gets to a point where Station X and Station Y probably get to at a point that "hmm, this is silly, we're at break even point.. and if we sell too much more L that we bought at $xx we'll actually make a loss". Station Y say jacks its price up. StationX goes "hmm, well we might hold the lower price for a bit to suck the juice dry (lowest point of week), but hey, lets jack up prices up too as why lose that money when consumers are paying a massive x c/L over at Station Y?".

And hence the cycle continues, day after day, week after week, until one day the world runs out of oil, and somebody goes "oh shit".

My explanation is probably another gross simplification, but that is the basic gist as I see it. What is other people's take??

[ferni]

off topic - whats CTOTY pred?

guessing its a crap award for the crap tyres?

[predator]

good guess

:goldstar:

Back on topic a little...

I was also going to say, generally the service station owners and franchisees get shit all, at most a few cents a litre from the actual consumer that goes into their pocket. This is what killed most independent operators. Notice also how most service stations these days are "snack stops" with all manner of other stuff in there, and basically trying to "value add" onto the basic process of selling petrol??

Ever noticed how at many service stations (won't go into particular names) they basically try and push stuff onto you when you go in there these days?? "Sure you don't want 2 for 1 chocolate bars?" Me thinking: no i ****ing well don't, if i did i would have damn well asked for them! (i hate this with a passion). My thoughts are as the profit margins for the stations themselves are getting smaller, the only way to make this up is through the "value adding" of high profit items such as chocolate bars, drinks, etc?? to every joe blow that walks in there to buy petrol.

[shaolin]

"Sure you don't want 2 for 1 chocolate bars?" Me thinking: no i ****ing well don't, if i did i would have damn well asked for them! (i hate this with a passion).  

HAHAHAHA........that happens all the time and I feel exactly the same way.

[LBR33]

The servos would make most of their profit from drinks then they do off petrol, Have you notices how many people buy drinks and food when you fill up.

[Mase]

Just a bit of info for you all. I practically manage a servo now. We get fuel from the bp refinary but my company isn't a BP. The delivery i got yesterday we paid roughly 90c a Litre for our price. Diesel was about the same. This gives you something to go by. Unfortunately due to our companies size etc we wont get it as cheap as BP and Shells will but you get the idea.

From my point of view, shell and bp seem a little unstoppable and have the ability to squash the market if need be. This sort of power i don't think should be allowed and I think the government should monitor the cost of fuel and sale price.

My theory in the long run is the people who are makign the most off the fuel are in order

1. The government

2. The oil refinaries

3. The big companies like BP and Shell

4. The independants

Wow, i just spat out a whole lot of useless crap so im off to bed as im up at 3:45am to open up. If your cruisin on beadesert rd and see a onevia at a blue servo, that's me!!

Cheers

Jays

[Abo Bob]

I used to work in a servo and one day the big boss (GM of a company that owned about 60 servo sites) came down and he said if someone buys a tank of fuel and a mars bar then half the profit comes from the mars bar.

Also do we call our government "THIS ADMINISTRATION"?????

[DoughBoy]

we wont get it as cheap as BP and Shells

Stores that are franchised (i.e. not company run) pay a ton for fuel, they get rebates from their "overlord" company based on the prices that other local petrol stations are selling fuel at. The best off servo's are independants - they can pick who they want their fuel from and can get quite a bit of leverage on price, getting fuel at below the price other (affiliated) stores can.

[Dahtone Racing]

my family own a petrol station and between my uncle and myself we manage it

we are an independantly owned shell site

atm we are paying over $1 for a litre for unleaded where as a franchised shell would be paying 90-95 cents per litre, so what are we supposed to do? sell at a loss just to keep to public happy? i think not

think of it this way would you go to work today and work for nothing?

in europe you can pay upto $2 a litre for unleaded

the only way you are going to get patrol prices back down is by stopping all this "peace keeping" the US is doing

by not buying petrol your just screwing the service station owners not the whole industry

[franks]

well said dude. im really over the complaints about how much petrol we have to pay especially looking at what other countries pay. granted they arent taxed as hard as us, but it all works out the same i guess...

if you can't afford petrol, you really can't afford a car maybe a civic or a scooter is an option. :flamed:

[GTRgeoff]

A few years back we had a 3 day embargo on one particular chain and it was well organised. Their prices dropped pretty quick when their sales fell.

Basically though we are being held hostage by OPEC. Time to go peace keep those bastards and stop collusion on prices. Competition is the key. Government tax is the next problem.

[Messiah]

good point Messiah i just got it in a email and thought it sounded good but by reading ur post sounds crap now

Thats ok, i thought the same thing about your post... interesting on the surface, utter crap underneath.

[Birnie]

Dave Letterman had a good skit on it.

Wednesday - Everybody dont buy petrol day

Thursday - Everybody buy twice as much 'cause of the day before.

[CerealKiller]

high oil prices = high petrol prices

I don't understand why Australia is really complaining. Our petrol is half of what they pay in the UK.

[predator]

australia is a bunch of wingers, but do nothing about it like most countries - that is why

if it really bothers people, buy little 1L 4cylinder cars, or catch public transport. Wingeing when a large number of people drive petrol guzzlers such as 4WD or even our turbos, when there other options is a little silly if you ask me.

its an interesting issue though, and to learn how it really works. Its simplistic to think just its some "big conspiracy" by one or two companies to milk us dry, there is much more complex issues to think about than simply boycotting your local service station for a day. Just some of the comments has increased my understanding of it all.