BP Station owners don't make their money on gas sales -- because BP does. Boycott.

[Hannah Bell]

Tension is mounting between BP and the neighborhood retailers that sell its gasoline. As more Americans shun BP gasoline as a form of protest over the Gulf oil spill, station owners are insisting BP do more to help them convince motorists that such boycotts mostly hurt independently owned businesses, not the British oil giant. To win back customers, they'd like the company's help in reducing the price at the pump.

BP owns just a fraction of the more than 11,000 stations across the U.S. that sell its fuel under the BP, AMOCO and ARCO banners. Most are owned by local businessmen whose primary connection to the oil company is the logo and A CONTRACT TO BUY GASOLINE.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100627/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_bp_at_the_pump


1. BP stations have contracts to buy gas from BP. Station owners make very little profit on it; they make the majority of their profits from overpriced sundries. BP doesn't make gas contracts without making money from them.


2. BP also has various other ways of making money out of branded stations, such as licensing or franchise fees, cuts on sundries, & the in-store sales of products they also get a cut on, such as Castrol, Aral, & BP oils/lubricants.

AM/PM is also a BP franchise business, as is wild bean cafe.


3. When you boycott stations, station owners bring various kinds of pressure on BP, up to & including lawsuits.


4. The argument that BP stations are run by innocent little independent businesspeople is mostly a crock. Name-brand stations require large initial investments, & most "investors" in the business own multiple stations or represent investment firms, as you can verify by running the names of some of the station operators quoted in recent news reports through google.

Furthermore, the fact that "little people" will be hurt never stops corporations from doing whatever the hell they please.

But when actions of "little people" have the potential to cause some harm to corporations, they'll start crying in their beer about all the little mom & pop stations, investors, employees, etc. that will be hurt.


5. The suggestion that instead of boycotting BP, people "push for investments in alternative energy" is another crock -- will you write a strongly worded letter to your Congressperson? Well, good luck with that, you'll wait until doomsday. You have no leverage without a big group that can get media attention or big money behind you.

The suggestion that you "make sure the big guys pay" is about as useful. How are *you* as an individual going to do that? You've noticed how often the "big guys" have paid within the last 10 years -- never, I think.

These locusts understand money, and that's about all they understand.

The current political situation is one in which there are a lot of pissed-off people, many losing their livelihoods, property, quality of life, etc. because of reckless corporate behavior.

It's a perfect situation for a boycott because the number of people seriously affected by the spill is so large; thus, hundreds of thousands of people have direct reason to boycott, & will, even without a central organization.

Boycott.

You want to make your boycott include less driving, less use of oil products - fine. But boycott.

If you want to write strongly worded letters to your Congresspeople about alternative energy development & prosecuting those responsible for the spill, that's great too. But boycott.

[skeptical cynic]

1. Agreed

The positives of making the BP brand a liability outweigh the negatives.

BP is responsible for an environmental catastrophe with a scope that we haven't begun to imagine.

A corrosion federal corrosion engineer once told me that BP's philosophy on pipeline corrosion is that corrosion protection was optimal if the pipeline began leaking at the moment the last drop of oil passed through. That is, not one unnecessary penny was spent protecting the line and the environment.

We should take the same tack where the fate of BP is concerned. The government/public response to BP's role in this catastrophe should reflect this philosophy: BP should spend its last penny and cease to exist at the very moment that the last bit of compensation and reparations are paid.

BP's only legitimate reason to exist right now is to pay for the damage they have done.

[KharmaTrain]

2. I Boycotted BP Before It Was Cool...

This goes back to when they were Amoco...their stations were always the most expensive and I was always turned off by the phony BP "green" ads.

There is no official BP boycott, it's that people are either angry at the corporate or ashamed to be seen patronizing their stations. And whose fault is this? I don't know of any organization that is saying to boycott the company...just consumers doing the "capitalist" thing...voting with their dollars.

While I have sympathy for the "little guy" who has a BP franchise, but it doesn't mean I will patronize just because.

[backscatter712]

15. Now that the boycott is cool, it's gonna cost BP significantly.

This boycott's gone viral, and isn't showing signs of going away.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. How about trying this --

Get a petition in the gas station's neighborhood -- "If the owner/operator of (station) switches from BP to another company, I pledge to patronize the station for all my regular gas purchases for no less than one year."

It's not binding, it's not verifiable, but it is symbolic, it encourages solidarity with small business people, and even if it fails or can be defeated, it sends a very strong message up the food/oil chain. (Sometimes, even failure can succeed.)

And it would probably bring out the Press, too.

Just an idea ...

--d!

[Downtown Hound]

4. You can always go into the station and buy a bag of pretzels

and NOT buy the gas.

[backscatter712]

13. BP gets a piece of the pretzel and slurpee sales. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

5. Given that BP are the largest suppliers of natural gas

to the USA is that being boycotted too ? Has everyone stopped cooking yet ?

I don't disagree with boycotts but they at least need to be consistant to work effectively.

[Hannah Bell]

6. a boycott doesn;t have to shut the company down to be effective. it just needs to cause the

company problems.

the more, the better, of course, but a bad name, a hit on the bottom line & pressure from franchisees & independent operators is a good start.

i'm doubtful that bp is the largest supplier of natural gas in the us market. do you have a link for that?

[dipsydoodle]

9. That was an error on my part for which I apologise

I had misinterpreted something. Over the past 2 years or so the USA has apparently become almost completely self sufficient on natural gas and is close to becoming an exporter.

[Hannah Bell]

11. thanks for the info.

[dipsydoodle]

12. Its worth searching the subject

Apparently the Russians, currently the biggest exporters , are so concerned that they are pushing for natural gas worldwide to be priced in a similar standard way to oil.

[ejpoeta]

7. i believe that is true of any gas station owner. i had some friends who owned a

mobil station. they said they get a penny a gallon i think. i think they also said they get less if the person goes into the store and also purchases other things. when they had a fire, the company they had the franchise from basically padded their losses in the fire including claiming the gas pumps which weren't even in the fire and then they came and took them and put them to use somewhere else. they made sure they took every penny of the insurance money, while my friends lost everything. and i mean everything. they had a house next to the gas station they ended up having to sell it and now live in a trailer park.

it's not just bp. i laugh whenever i hear how the gas station owners are benefiting from the cost of gas. store owners probably just eke out a living. while the suppliers make a killing.

[Hannah Bell]

8. not if you own 100s of stations. independents are on the way out.

one guy running one station can't make it.

capitalism destroys small capital.

[ejpoeta]

10. that is definitely true. a small guy like the one my sister goes to....

he's old and has been struggling for years. we have the rez nearby and flying j and TA right by the thruway. it's amazing he's even still there.

[backscatter712]

14. Also: Boycotts can deliver a huge PR black eye, which affects stock prices.

When a company's perceived by the public to be behaving badly, and activists are taking actions like boycotts in protest, institutional investors can freak out and dump the company's stock.

BP's stock value has been cut in half, costing them $22 billion. I don't think all of that loss can be attributed to the boycott, but I think the boycott certainly helps, now that there's news stories about gas stations getting hit. Investors are dumping BP stock, people and businesses wanting to buy or build new gas stations won't want to franchise with BP, the cumulative effects are gonna be expensive for BP.

[Sebastian Doyle]

16. I worked at an Am/Pm way back when, long before they had any connection to BP

At the time, it was the only gas station in an area that was centrally located between a community college, an industrial park, the local auto mall, and the seat of the county government, so we did a huge amount of volume.

The station made a whopping 5 cents a gallon on the gas, and that was regardless of how much the price went up or down. And this just happened to be during the buildup to Poppy Bush's Iraq war, so it was going up. Damn near every day.

The "real" money was made on the barfburgers, hot dogs, frozen yogurt, and other prepared food items, which also sold well because there weren't many other places to get lunch in the area at the time for the college students, office workers, blue collar workers, and coked up car salesmen.

Of course the thing about Am/Pm is that they were all corporate owned anyway. Yeah, they came up with a shell corporation so they could claim it was something other than Arco. But the paper trail was obvious. Bottom line is that every dime you spent in that store still went to Atlantic Richfield. And now would still go to BP.

So while there may well be some independent stores which happen to sell BP gas, and if you feel bad for them, buy something else there, if you must. Around here the only BP stations ARE the Arco's, so I don't have to feel guilty about killing any small businesses.

[amborin]

17. K&R good to learn