Received this email the other day. Don't know how long it's been doing the rounds but on face value it makes sense:
See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it
We are hitting £112.9 a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1.20 a litre. Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:
Please read it and join in!
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the market place
not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not
purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:
For the rest of this year DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP.
If they are not selling any petrol, 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 Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!!
Now, don't wimp out at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to a lot of 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. That's all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP) 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 8days!!! 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 69p a LITRE RANGE
It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda,Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e. boycott BP and Esso
Why can't the airlines or who represents them get together & TELL the oil traders that they will not buy fuel over a certain price? If all airlines & operators of aircraft did this would that not force the oil majors to peg prices,at least for aviation?
Or is getting aviation to present a united front an impossible dream?
I guess it's always a case of economics - supply & demand, plus geopolitical tensions when it comes to oil.
Something has to be done at some point - we can't have 90% of the airlines that fly people, including oil execs, around the world go to the wall!
I think it is time for interpreter, BYALPHAINDIA and DAVYDAY to wake up. You have no birthright on cheap energy.
If you think you can do better than BP & Esso, just start your own energy company. If you think you have an viable way of extracting oil shales, do it. Better than blaming OPEC, energy company's, China, India, Bush, the entire US, the speculators etc, etc.
SACCADE. You have not read what I said. The oil companies will find a way to provide an economcal energy source for transpotation but to think that oil is close to running out is absurd. At current usage we still have hundreds of years supply. Locally there may be problems. The gulf states are now planning coal fired power stations with South African coal. We have coal reserves of enormous magnitude here in the UK.
Mankind will find a way but - watch this space - oil prices will come down and I hope a lot of speculators burn their fingers.
Don't buy petrol from Esso and BP to hurt them? What a load of bollocks frankly. Where do you think that the supermarkets get their fuel from? To be honest i haven't heard too many reports coming in of oil exploration in the "Tescos" oil field.
interpreter, we are not running out, but we are peaking. Supply is stagnant over the past three years, and the bad news for 2008 is that production from Russia (2nd producer in the world) is now in decline. EIA has estimated that demand is 87,2 mb/d for 2008, and supply is approx 86mb/d. This is the reason for $129 oil, and the Goldman & Sachs prediction of $200 oil.
I don't share your religious confidence in the ingenuity of mankind, but I will definitely be watching this space.
Supply is stagnant because of limitations in refining capacity, not resource. Irans refineries are aging, Nigeria produces less than 20% of it's available output due to local instability, Russia is limited in it's ability to attract outside investment due to Putins unfortunate habit of seizing Western investments and handing them to his mates, whereas Venezuelas president hands them to the state instead. The only thing that will drive the price down is a reduction in the Wests dependency on cheap oil.
It's about time people woke up to the fact that oil is a scarce and valuable resource. Fossil fuels are a one time geological inheritance that our species will never see again once they have been used up.
The fact that certain businessmen have chosen to make use of the material merely as an ingredient in their profit making engines is crass and demonstrates ignorance on a frightening level.
I predict future generations will look back on our epoch and it's energy profligacy, shaking their heads in much the same way as we do now when we think about the slave trade.
Spain for 99 pence (plus taxes)! Get real.
And for those people who think the problem's all down to refining capacity, allow me to introduce my good friend, Mr Ostrich.
This is starting to read like a copy of the daily mail.
Boycotting the forecourts of BP and whoever else is going to do sweet FA. Supplying petrol to ego-centric right-wing reactionaries in middle England is a sideline of a highly diversified global business - It's a bit like boycotting the prawn sandwiches in M&S. BP right now has a market capitalisation of £118 billion, are you honestly childish enough to believe that this is a result of shafting you at the pump?
For what it's worth, oil is doing what it's doing because of a few factors.
Currency and Speculation are the two main drivers. The market is delinquent right now, and overblown (think perhaps of the last 10 years of the national obsession: house prices). Like house price rises, it is less to do with hard and fast supply and demand, but more about availability of money and the goal of profit. The delinquency comes from the fact that catalysts for price rises in the price of oil, once removed, seem not to affect the price in the opposite way. They remain in the price. Now, if you were OPEC what's the incentive to flood the market? They can't either, believe it or not, those evil guardians of our birthright can't just open the taps (remembeer Grangemouth) because aside from Saudi, there's not ever so much spare capacity. They're making great money and good for them.
What I do know is that it's better to be able to see beyond the end of ones own nose. It's not the end of the world and neither will it prove to be, once the price has fallen and the dust has settled, you'll have forgotten it. As you've already forgotten the huge gains in the price of domestic property over the last decade and are now overeacting towards current trends. As Grangemouth was going to throttle Scotland and northern England.
Finally, there is lots and lots and lots and lots or oil left. Lots. As we go forward it'll get harder and more costly to extract - because it will be deeper (Tupi or Namibia) more distant (potentially the Falklands) and heavier (our own backyard). I'll happily take bets from anyone at whatever price that nobody here is going to outlive internal combustion.
Indeed, no foreseeable shortage of oil. Problem is twofold : a) upstream, shortage of production capacity and/or unwillingness of existing producers to produce more, and b) downstream, shortage of distribution/pipeline systems to meet current demand and also refining capacity.
Iraq could have largest oil reserves in the world
Sonia Verma in Sharm el-Sheikh, The Times
Iraq dramatically increased the official size of its oil reserves yesterday after new data suggested that they could exceed Saudi Arabia’s and be the largest in the world. The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister told The Times that new exploration showed that his country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels. The figure is triple the country’s present proven reserves and exceeds that of Saudi Arabia’s estimated 264 billion barrels of oil. Barham Salih said that the new estimate had been based on recent geological surveys and seismic data compiled by "reputable, international oil companies . . . This is a serious figure from credible sources."...
continua / continued avanti - next [44184] [ 20-may-2008 08:02 ECT ]
Reserve estimates are just that...estimates. There is a decades long history of over or under estimating oil reserves for political or economic advantage. The doubling or tripiling of reserve estimates has been done before. Saudi Arabia is a classic example.
Besides it's not really a reserve issue, it's an extraction and refinement issue. Peak oil refers not only to reserve estimates, but to production results and available supply into the marketplace.
I am not BA and haven't read all the posts, so forgive me if this has been mentioned previously.
What will WW do with the surplus crews that will be standing around on full pay etc.? I cant see him paying out for too long before he starts looking for "volunteers" to depart.
This maybe good timing on BA's part and a shot across the bowes of BALPA. More or less saying if you go on strike we wont have to look for volunteers to take early retirement. Yes early retirement. Just because one is ex BA will not mean that most will be snapped up by another airline. The "glory days" are over for a few more decades now. In fact if you think about it, WW's timing maybe be spot on, as far as BA are concerned, come October there will probably be a large surplus of experienced pilots on all types flooding the market. So he may do the 2 together, save money by parking up a/c and the early retirement volunteers handed to him on a plate, if the strike goes ahead. Mind you I guess he would have no hesitation getting the axe out should he need to.
I am sure it wont only be BA parking a/c in the desert either, as oil will hit $200/barrel, within a year is my guess.
Just a thought.
Last edited by justlooking_tks : 21st May 2008 at 06:19.
Reading an article in the HR section of a newspaper stating the hiring of oil-industry professionals is becoming more challenging now as the technical skills are highly demanding due to the increasing difficulty in finding and digging out that precious liquid, I started thinking this is the beginning of the end of our system as we know it.
Let me explain : if oil-producing firms hardly find anyone skilled enough to pump out petrol, WHATEVER THE SALARY(!!!), this should mean this petrol IS getting extremely scarce. The number highly-qualified engineers ready to put tons of cash in their pocket should be sufficient. In fact, it is not because this task has become so complicated if not nearly impossible.
And when I link this information to the fact countries like Saudi Arabia tend to blow their figures on remaining stocks a little bit, I believe it is high time I started thinking about a future reconversion and change in life-style.
Now, who in this room is surprised with this outcome ? Everybody knows it won't last another century and our lives will change more than dramatically. And in a way, isn't it time we stopped that whole messy dependance on oil ? Look where it's taking us to : wars and pollution. We can make it a chance for an environmental revolution or it can kill our societies.
Yes, the old "don't buy from BP" e-mail...what a crock of x.
The fact is that retail petrol operations are very far removed from the oil exploration businesses of any of the oil majors. Oil flows from the majors into refineries (often not owned by the majors), which is then distributed to the petrol stations by other companies.
The petrol stations themselves are largely franchised these days, so the only person you are hurting is the hard-working Mr Patel who owns the place.
Whilst I believe a boycott won't work for practical reasons i.e company cars = company fuel allowances, it nonetheless focusses the 'little guy' on something. The fuel protests of 2001 only achieved a partial success due to the lorry drivers picketing oil installations. Since then fuel has tripled and we stand by, apparently helpless. Don't know about you, but I was lead to believe, the UK government takes around 85% in duties and tax so diesel at 120/lt is a pound for Golden Brown.
Why are Emirates/Etihad/Qatar buying aircraft like gifts at a pound shop? There won't be a emirati green tax. Their access to heavy oil (processed to make kerosene) ensures that derivatives are about 10p a Gallon - retail !! Level playing field - not !!
If BA decide to do this, we'll just be flying in different colour aircraft in the future.
Second that motion
Cheap oil
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