Boycott Offshore Oil

9/2/2005 | HeroMyth

[HeroMyth]

What about simply staging a 30 day boycott of offshore oil?

I read a report that said in the first 10 months of 2004, we used 20.4 million bbl/d (barrels per day). So, in a years time let's just say 24 million bbl/d. If we divide that by 12 months, we use 2 million bbl a month. (rough estimation) With 700 million barrels of oil in the reserve, we would hardly put a dent in our reserves, and at the current price of oil ($66.60 per barrel averaged of 4 oil providers on Sept 2 at 730am PST according to Bloomberg)and multiply the cost of each barrel by 2 million barrels we use per month, OPEC would lose roughtly $133,200,000 from a 30-day boycott. That should be enough to put a dent in their pocketbooks and turn their heads.

Or do we all just enjoy getting gouged at the pumps?

[Tax-chick]

How do you know where the oil that produced the gas you buy came from? Is there a website where one can order gas made from domestic crude, for home delivery?

[Fierce Allegiance]

How are you going to accomplish this. The idea is lovely, but it's hardly feasible. Do a little study on gas distribution and you'll see what I mean.

[shuckmaster]

It all goes through the same pipeline.

[HeroMyth]

I'm not saying that my research isn't complete...I just kind of did a quick study to figure out the cost. I'm sure there are other avenues I havent researched (such as pipelines and distribution)but sometimes I feel like we aren't doing enough to figure out how to not get gouged when we go to the pumps, but perhaps we don't get the entire picture. I am a student who works a part time job, and i'm not saying I'm better than anyone else. I know we are all in the same boat here, i'm just trying to think of a way to maybe give someone an idea to help us out of it. If it might work cool! If not, then well I tried .

[HeroMyth]

I'm not saying that my research isn't complete...I just kind of did a quick study to figure out the cost. I'm sure there are other avenues I havent researched (such as pipelines and distribution)but sometimes I feel like we aren't doing enough to figure out how to not get gouged when we go to the pumps, but perhaps we don't get the entire picture. I am a student who works a part time job, and i'm not saying I'm better than anyone else. I know we are all in the same boat here, i'm just trying to think of a way to maybe give someone an idea to help us out of it. If it might work cool! If not, then well I tried .

[Tax-chick]

The fact that you keep saying "gouged," as if that meant something, suggests that you need to do some more basic study. I suggest the complete works of Thomas Sowell.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Idiocy.

[Fierce Allegiance]

A couple months back, I did a tank job for a tank farm in New Haven, CT, a port and distribution point for much of New England.

Trucks loaded fuel out of there day & night. There were independents, Mobil, Shell, Hess and a bunch of others picking up gasoline at the rack. They all sell product from the same tank. Some add a 5-gallon bucket of some special crap so they can say their product is different, but it's all from the same source.

It's the same deal with heating oil and diesel.

Same deal with the crap running through the pipelines. It's a commodity. Company x puts in so many barrels and expects to get the same out at the end of the line. They don't care if it came from their operations or anyone elses, just as long as the quantity is correct.

There is no way a consumer can say with any reasonable level of certainty that the fuel came from Texas of Saudi or Alaska.

[Fierce Allegiance]

To me, there is no such thing as gouging - it's market economics.

The best short-term way to reduce the price of petro products is to severely curtail usage. An oversupply will lower costs soon.

Long term, lobby your elected represestatives and let them know you are pissed off that the enviro faggots haven't allowed petro companies to build a refinery in the USA since 1976, probably before you were born.

[Dutch14]

I don't think the real issue here is where it came from. I think what is trying to be said here is "what can we do about this?" When will this end or will it ever end? The way things seem to be going, if someone has a bad day all of us pay for it at the pumps. (and I am NOT calling the disaster in the south a "bad day")

Is there a way for us, the consumer to take control of this? When is enough in fact enough?

[Moral Hazard]

"I read a report that said in the first 10 months of 2004, we used 20.4 million bbl/d (barrels per day). So, in a years time let's just say 24 million bbl/d. If we divide that by 12 months, we use 2 million bbl a month. (rough estimation)"

This math makes no sense at all. How did you convert from ~24million barels/day to ~2 million barrels/month?

[SAJ]

No can do, Tax-chick. There is absolutely no way to tell from which company's crude your gasoline was made, short of possibly a lab analysis...which most times won't do any good in any case. Why is this?

Here's a perfectly typical world oil mkt transaction:

1) 1 MM bbl of Arabian sour crude is lifted in Saudi, sold by Aramco to ExxonMobil
2) BPAmoco, next day, sign a gasoline distribution agreement in, say, Australia
3) BPAmoco find themselves a bit short of feedstock for the South Asia refinery, so swap 500K bbl of WTI in storage in NJ for 550K bbl of ExxonMobil's crude just leaving the Gulf
4) ExxonMobil refine the WTI into RFG II outside Philly
5) CITGO have a problem with their Central Illinois refinery same day and swap ExxonMobil 600K bbl of Orinoco sour on the Gulf for immediate transshipment of 400K of the refined WTI gasoline in Philly
6) On arrival, this gasoline is blended with 100K CITGO purchased outright from Chevron. 7) Two days later, you fill your tank in Chicago at the CITGO station.

Question: whose crude did you buy? Second question: whose gasoline did you buy? Certainly not CITGO's, even though you purchased it at their shop.

Which company are you attempting to boycott, because you didn't succeed in boycotting ANY of these outfits.

[SAJ]

No can do, Tax-chick. There is absolutely no way to tell from which company's crude your gasoline was made, short of possibly a lab analysis...which most times won't do any good in any case. Why is this?

Here's a perfectly typical world oil mkt transaction:

1) 1 MM bbl of Arabian sour crude is lifted in Saudi, sold by Aramco to ExxonMobil
2) BPAmoco, next day, sign a gasoline distribution agreement in, say, Australia
3) BPAmoco find themselves a bit short of feedstock for the South Asia refinery, so swap 500K bbl of WTI in storage in NJ for 550K bbl of ExxonMobil's crude just leaving the Gulf
4) ExxonMobil refine the WTI into RFG II outside Philly
5) CITGO have a problem with their Central Illinois refinery same day and swap ExxonMobil 600K bbl of Orinoco sour on the Gulf for immediate transshipment of 400K of the refined WTI gasoline in Philly
6) On arrival, this gasoline is blended with 100K CITGO purchased outright from Chevron. 7) Two days later, you fill your tank in Chicago at the CITGO station.

Question: whose crude did you buy? Second question: whose gasoline did you buy? Certainly not CITGO's, even though you purchased it at their shop.

Which company are you attempting to boycott, because you didn't succeed in boycotting ANY of these outfits.

[ThinkDifferent]

Is there a way for us, the consumer to take control of this?

Simple: use less gas. Of course, that's not what anybody wants to hear.

[SAJ]

Apols for the double post.

(whap!) ''Bad fingers, bad !'' (whap)

[kittymyrib]

Well, Citgo is Venezuelan oil and ironically, the refinery at Lake Charles that will get the bulk of the SPR oil also belongs to Venezula.

[Tax-chick]

I was just being sarcastic, in my extremely understated way, to the original poster :-). I don't believe in boycotts, nor in "price gouging," as I am a follower of Thomas Sowell.

Appreciate your information, though ... much of it is new to me. I studied oil markets in college, back in the mid-80's, but with an emphasis on investment, not on the distribution process.

[SAJ]

The bottom-line point about gasoline in the US is that, as another poster mentioned, it's almost a pure commodity. The 'almost' is present because of boutique fuel requirements in numerous parts of the country.

BUT, for shipping purposes, it's far easier to move around a generic blend, then customise it to local spec at the finishing refinery. Simplifies swaps, too.

[HeroMyth]

This is exactly what i'm trying to say.

Moral Hazard, my math was way off, my apologies. It was rather early when I typed this.

Going back and refiguring, if we are using 20.4 million bbl/d times 30 days, that's 612 million bbl/d. Multiplying that by the earlier average figure I got off of Bloomberg this morning ($66.60/barrel)that's $4,075,900,000. So this does total most of our reserves, but the dollar figure of what OPEC would lose from us is much higher. Maybe a 30 day boycott isn't too smart, but SOMETHING. If we do what everyone suggests where we fill up on a certain date and dont buy gas again for a whole day...we are STILL buying gas.

Tax-chick, I honestly feel 'gouged' at the pumps. Perhaps it is legitamate pricing...but maybe it's not.

I've heard rumors of under-production on purpose, refineries being completely shut down for general maintenence which is not how they are supposed to do it, etc etc. I am not saying I believe these rumors, but I don't know what to think. As it is, I go from home to school, to work and home late at night to make my gas stretch for almost two weeks. This has been going on for a year now and we keep hearing about prices going down. When? Going down from $2.50 to $2.45 to me isn't going down.

Like I said, Dutch14 hit the nail on the head. I'm just doing a little thinking to figure out if we can do something. Driving less probably won't happen with everyone.