There's one little problem with "boycotting" BP: it's not possible to do so

In boycotting BP you've got six issues to contend with.

The easy one is BP-branded petroleum products. This you can do--no BP gas or Castrol motor oil. There's a list of brands BP owns floating around this website, and if you avoid patronizing those brands you can be okay.

Next comes "unbranded" gasoline. Every town is covered up with those places: gas stations whose gas doesn't bear the name of a petroleum company. Those guys just contract with the local petroleum distributor and 5000 gallons of the stuff shows up in the parking lot every morning at six. And who shows up in the distributor's parking lot? Just wait.

Gasoline is transported to distributorships via pipeline. The way it works is pretty simple. The petroleum companies make gasoline base stock at refineries and put it in tanks connected to these pipelines. The distributors of said gasoline draw it off into their own tanks. They also have tanks of additive packages, which turns the base stock into a specific kind of gasoline. Some of the gasoline in that mix came from BP. (Yes, what I am saying is the only difference between Shell gas, BP gas, Texaco gas, Exxon gas, Sunoco gas and Fred's El Cheapo gas is the additive package the brand of gas is reputed to contain. If Shell gas costs more than Sunoco that is because Shell's additives cost more, or Shell's goon squad has a dental plan.)

Now that we know everyone's base stock is stirred together in the pipeline, consider how it's sold. Assume Shell, BP, Texaco, Exxon and Sunoco all put a million barrels a day into the pipeline system. If Shell's customers and BP's both sell a million barrels a day, everything's wonderful. If Shell starts selling a million and a half because people are pissed at BP and cut BP's sales by half, Shell has to come up with enough gas to meet demand. They can't make any more because any industrial process has a finite production capacity; if you have a network of refineries that can produce a million barrels of gasoline in 24 hours you can't just go to the foremen and say "work harder, dammit!"--no matter how hard they work, they can't get more than a million barrels a day out of their equipment. So...they gotta buy what they need, and there just so happens to be the half-million barrels per day they need sitting there with BP's name on it. Type a few commands into a computer and voila! Shell suddenly owns enough base stock to make its customers happy.

Next is the crude oil problem. Crude oil happens to be the thing from which gasoline is made, and if you need more than you can get from your own wells--or if you don't have wells at all; it's certainly not necessary for a petroleum company to have their own--you buy it on the open market. BP is a major player in the crude oil market.

And last is petrochemicals. They are huge players in the acetic acid, acetic anhydride and purified terephthalic acid market. You know all those 20-ounce soda bottles? There's terephthalic acid in all of them, and BP makes a shitload of it. They also make a massive amount of bitumens, which are used in roofing.

My point is not that we should continue to patronize BP. My point is, We The People should just require BP to surrender its US operations to us as payment for recovering the oil spill. Once we've got it, we could do one of two things: run it as a government-owned corporation producing fuel and petrochemicals largely for the government's own use--how much cheaper would it be to run the Air Force if there wasn't any profit in the fuel they burn?--or sell the company to the highest bidder.

Companies like BP have built in anti-boycott measures, to the point where all a boycott does is let the boycotters feel smug about themselves.

Want to hurt BP? Then hold your reps' feet to the fire until they go after BP. Surrender its assets, criminal trials for those responsible, and nationalization of its US operations.

It's more like a huge monopoly with a lot of heads. If there are ten petroleum companies and you buy a gallon of gas from company A, companies B through J are going to get some of your money. There's no way they couldn't; everyone's base stock is in that gasoline.

who owns the fuel transfer stations; after all with gas at ~$3.00 a gallon those individual proprietors must be millionaires! :sarcasm:

Collateral damage?

... would go after them, much like the WTO went after us when we tried to be able to have labels to say "dolphin safe" tuna as "restricting trade". That would assume of course that there would be some means of being able to subtract BP out of their supply chain, which might be impossible.

Of course if someone did that, and the WTO did try to do that, then perhaps that could be used as the first stage to try and mobilize a movement to renegotiate or drop NAFTA.

Change "might be impossible" to "would be impossible."

North Carolina is served by one petroleum pipeline network. There's one pipe for gasoline products and one for number-two distillate--diesel, jet fuel and heating oil. Everyone uses it. You put in a certain amount of fuel and get paid for it. The companies who buy the fuel draw off what they need and pay for it. Any gallon of gas you buy is going to contain everything from Citgo gas, which is liberal-approved because they buy their crude from Venezuela rather than from the Bin Laden clan, to Shell, which sources its oil in part from Nigeria. (I assume Eastern Washington, where the gas I buy now comes from, also has one pipeline network feeding it.)

If BP had its own network of pipes that carried no other manufacturer's product, and no other manufacturer sold BP gas, we could say "yes! We are going to starve the beast!" But as it is? No damn way.

I was just thinking if another company were to put in place its own network of pipes to say they don't have BP gas infecting their gas that it might be possible. Though this wouldn't be too likely.

And as noted, perhaps you might get the WTO trying to throw itself into the mix too like they do elsewhere.

I remember when 7-Eleven stopped getting gas from Citgo as well, to help fan the flames from the right who were threatening boycotts because of Citgo being "Chavez's gas".

I will still from this point forward not buy any Castrol oil, and will avoid going to BP stations or AM/PM markets too.

Canadian MTBE manufacturer was able to sue California for 2.4 billion bucks for violating NAFTA provisions.

Of course those 2.4 billion bucks paid to some manufacturer is much better than all our water being MTBE contaminated, but still - IT IS APPALLING!

They prefer the self righteous feel-goodism of a boycott that makes them believe they are really doing something noble.

I always believed that everything ultimately gets mixed together and that there is no specific and separate BP oil or gas being consumed.

If a BP station boycott works at all it is most likely to cause low wage clerks to be laid off or maybe eliminating a third shift. I'm sure those losing their jobs are thankful for the boycotters. Just collateral damage.

and all its assets owned by those affected by the spill: including other nations if it reaches them.

I wrote a petition for a voter boycott of any candidates who receive campaign funding from BP in 2010. Do you think that might send a stronger message or am I just whistling in the dark as well?

Of course, it would only work with a massive response, and of course, I have very little influence and so far only have 59 signatures including my own, but what do you think of the idea?

They're everywhere.
BHN

I have been trying to explain this for 2 weeks now but most people don't want to be informed. They want to pretend that buying from Shell stations (supporting ethnic cleansing in Nigeria) is somehow morally superior despite the gas coming from the same place.

We The People should just require BP to surrender its US operations to us as payment for recovering the oil spill.
Never going to happen.

If I hit you in a car accident I can't just seize your house because I believe it is just compensation even if I was reallly hurt.

No we have rule of law. Go int court sue BP for damages. Get a court order. Demand payment. BP fails to pay force them into bankruptcy.

BP should pay but it should be done under rule of law not demanding forfeiting the company.

Stop being such a mouthpiece for BP. If BP wants the protection of the bankruptcy court, it knows where the federeal courthouse in Houston is located. It's only a matter of time before BP puts its American operation into chapter 11. The US fines will not be stopped by such a filing, however.

Face it. You haven't been right about this incident yet, and that hasn't changed today.

1) I sold BP stock less than a week later. I told you it was a trade nothing more. Win some - lose some.
2) The US govt knows where the courthouse is located also.

We don't simply seize assets in this country. Those damaged (govt/states/businesses/etc) file claims. BP pays the claims. IF BP DOESN'T pay the claims they take them to court. If they win BP pays. If bp doesn't pay then they force bankruptcy to protect their claim.

Nowhere is there "x is really bad" so we seize "x" assets. Not in the United States.

As in, you give us the company and we'll clean up the environmental devastation it caused. We'd have to make it pretty juicy to get them to agree--like "if you do this we won't round up all the culprits--like the guy responsible for the Three Little Pigs chart--and throw them in jail."

and then waste more suggesting WE take over bp.

I'll stick with boycotting until you come up with feasible plan.

"My point is, We The People should just require BP to surrender its US operations to us as payment for recovering the oil spill." How do you intend to accomplish that? Do you have some magic beans, Jack? Let's stay in the real world, shall we?

Your argument lacks merit. No boycott reaches all products a company issues. The point of a boycott is to deprive a company of one's business, and the extent to which that happens is considered a good thing. If BP has to sell its retail centers to another major oil company, all the better.

Stop worrying about those who advocate boycott. They're right to do so. Why anyone would spend their time arguing against a boycott is truly a mystery. It's never argued by anyone who really knows what they're talking about, as you've shown. If you think the injury to BP doesn't matter, why don't you try suing them and see what happens? If you think they don't care if you hurt their business even one dollar, try standing on their property with a sign that says "BP is killing the Gulf, don't buy here!"

Your entire argument is based upon your misunderstanding of BP and how they handle problems. Boycotts do hurt them, because they get a cut of every dollar in every BP retail center. Your argument that boycotting them won't reach all their sales is silly at best. It reaches the products it reaches, and that is all a boycott is supposed to do. It communicates displeasure. It deprives BP and its partners in those operations of revenues.

for a start, until the cleanup is resolved?