The Future of the Oil Industry: Introduction

THE FUTURE OF THE OIL INDUSTRY
INTRODUCTION: The Chain Letter

Two or three weeks ago I received an email from a good friend asking me (and many other people) to “stop buying petrol and gasoline from the two major Petroleum Companies to force them to lower their fuel prices”. This email started a brief discussion with another friend, with whom we were trying to decide if this was a nice project, or if it was only a plain hoax…
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Subject: GAS PRICES

Pretty good idea to lower gas prices...

I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon by the summer Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth, offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea has come up with a plan that can really work.

Please read it and join with us!

By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.97 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50-$1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace.... not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON"T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do!! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people and DON"T purchase ANY gasoline from EXXON and MOBIL. That's all. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am... so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!

Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK
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What I'm planning to do today is just explain why that email is a plain hoax (or chain letter, as you wish), and state some of the questions that the reading of it may rise. On the forthcoming days I'll try to answer those same questions, on my very personal point of view. But before continuing let me warn you that I used to work for one of the Seven Sisters, so you may find my thoughts a little bit biased. Nevertheless is my wish that you form your own opinion on the subjects that we're going to address, and I only hope that you consider the facts that I’m going to express here as part of your own thinking process...

First of all, there’s no mathematician called Phillip Hollsworth on the Internet. If you google his name on the net the only thing you’re going to get is different versions of the above chain letter. Scientists usually publish many papers through their lives, and it’s very rare to find one with no single reference on the net.

Second, he claims to be a mathematician, but his plan for reaching 300 million people by email is very ambitious, considering there are only about 328 million active Internet users in the world according to Nielsen NetRatings. If you consider additionally that not everybody forwards chains, that some people are going to receive it more than once, and that not everybody accesses their email accounts on a daily basis, you will conclude as me that his claim that this mail can reach 300 million people in 8 days is excessively optimistic.

But let’s be positive and let’s assume that the letter actually finds its way, that it reaches hundreds of millions, and that everybody stops buying fuel from those two companies (which by the way have merged in the largest petroleum company in the world: ExxonMobil). Would this action effectively and permanently drive prices down? I’m sorry to say it but the answer is no. If everyone stopped buying from the largest company, the smaller ones would run out of stock, and would have to do our dirty work by buying from them anyway. And we'd probably pay even more for gas, since we would be paying for an additional link in the chain.

So, can we do anything to lower gas prices? Or are they going to stay at today’s level? Are petroleum companies really pushing prices up? Is the opening of Iraqi oil fields going to stabilize prices? Can we keep using our beloved SUVs? Can’t we migrate to renewable energy sources and forget about this oil nightmare?

Those are some of the questions that we’ll try to answer over the next days.

See you here soon!
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For better analysis of the above chain letter, please visit BreakTheChain.org and Rumor Mill.