I keep getting these emails that say everyone should not buy gas on such and such a date. That never works, to many people who are too lazy, who never get the message, or just don't care. The real idea is to get everyone buying on a couple days of the week. If everyone would only buy gas on Wednesday and Saturday, it would put the oil companies in such a bind they would go down. The problem that buying only on Wednesday and Saturday provides is the inability of the wholesale suppliers to keep up with demand on the days that everyone is buying on, they don't have the supply capability to do this and on the other 5 days of the week they would be sitting on a trillion or so of unmoving inventory which will drive them broke, Either way we have control. So who here is in for only buying gas on Wednesday and Saturday????

I know it would seem great to watch the Oil companies go down, but as of now oil is the life blood to our economy. Until we get an alternate fuel source that is cost competitive to oil there is really no way that we can afford to watch the oil companies fold.

To make them play our way instead of bending over for them????

Why not put enough pain on them

If we put the pain on them then it will only trickle down to us. We would be cutting our supply. And since demand for oil continues to go up with no end in sight we would be creating a horrible scenerio with prices.

The oil companies are not out to screw us. They are busting their butts. They can bring in a ton of oil to meet our demand the problem lies that there is a major bottleneck in the refining process. We havn't built a new refinery in the US since 1976. Those places are maxed out and the littlest disruption like a hurricane that may close down just one refinery creates a disaster.

One way I thought that may help is the government can help by doing a subsidy. Which means lets say gas is $3.00 a gallon. The government will tell the gas companies to sell it at $2.00 a gallon and in turn Uncle Sam will cover the $1.00. They do it with crops a lot of the time. Everyone wins and everyone is happy. They could at least do that until new refineries are put up. I am not even sure there are plans to build new ones since it costs about 3 billion dollars to put one up.

Like I said before the oil companies are not in some conspiracy to screw us over. It is just a classic case of economics. Until we find a cost efficient alternative fuel Oil will remain our economy driver.

how do we choke the oil companies? pour $3 of gas down the CEOs' throght (sp?)

Wait, so you suggest that not buying on one particular date is ineffective because people are lazy but yet not buying on 5 particular dates is more effective? What would be the point? Most people only buy gas once or twice a week, so people are already only buying on Wed and Sat.

The problem with buying on only two days of the week would be the incredible lines. Instead, the public ought to go on "strike". Just simply stop buying gas. Don't go to work. Don't do anything that requires the use of fuel. The "strike" would only last a few days and would have only marginal/moderate impact on the economy. The oil companies would have a much lower price of gas.

Originally posted by Freedom_for_sum
The problem with buying on only two days of the week would be the incredible lines. Instead, the public ought to go on "strike". Just simply stop buying gas. Don't go to work. Don't do anything that requires the use of fuel. The "strike" would only last a few days and would have only marginal/moderate impact on the economy. The oil companies would have a much lower price of gas.

A few days? REally? I don't believe it. These companies look at the monthly gross, not daily or even weekly. 90% of oil is used in the manufacture of fuels or energy. So these companies may also use the oil to provide electricity to your house. Wouldn't it be a shame if as a result of this strike your house's flow electricity stopped. I doubt this would happen. But a strike of this magnitude would kill jobs and would have to last longer than a few days.

For the sake of argument, let's say that everyone went on strike and didn't buy gas for a while. Now lets say that this strike did infact hurt the profits of the oil companies. After a while, people will need gas from thier strike, and the demand would sky rocket; would it not be conseivable that the oil companies would just rise thier prices even higher? Or even if the demand didn't change, wouldn't the loss of revenue drive the price up? I don't know, so I am really asking here.

Do this.

Buy a moped.
Adjust moped to run on ethanol.
Build a solar heated still.
Use your weekly food waste and other viable sources of mash to produce ethanol at home.
Poor ethanol in moped.
Repeat forever.

No oil. Ever again. Everyone has food waste, everyone could build a still. We get free sunshine (for now-- if everyone does this there is sure to be a sunshine tax of some sort).

Why would anyone want ot run their car on ethanol? This will not help the farmers, it will only hurt them.

As you use valuable top soil to plant the crops necessary to extract the ethanol, you have taken away top soil for crops meant to feed people. What are we going to do? Plant crops in clay or sand?

Top soil can take millions of years to form. When the pilgrims started to arrive, there was about 4 feet of top soil in the midwest, now there are only inches of it left.