boycottomy

I've seen a lot of talk on both MySpace and Facebook about staying away from the gas pumps on May 15th. I'm not sure who came up with the idea or set that specific date, but it has definitely taken off, with numerous Facebook groups and MySpace bulletins championing the cause. And that's all well and good. I don't own a BP station and I don't really care who purchases gas or when. But I think it's pretty silly to think this one-day boycott will accomplish anything at all. I don't have any clue what the actual numbers are, but I'll throw out some approximations that sound plausible to me at least. Let's say that, between MySpace and Facebook, the boycotters manage to attract 3 million people that actually commit and agree to not buy gas on the 15th of May. Multiply that by twenty to fifty dollars per tank of gas, you say, and that's a lot of money. Perhaps. However, it's extremely doubtful that all of that money will actually be lost, even for a day. Again, for the sake of argument, let's assume the average person fills up his or her tank about once every ten days. There are some that fill up more than that obviously and some that fill up less, but we'll pick that number as a nice even average. That means that only a tenth of those 3 million people would have filled up their cars on the 15th if not for the boycott. That cuts the number of customers lost from 3 million to 300,000. I would wager that 85 to 90% of those FaceSpacers will end up purchasing gas on the following day since it's not like they can skip work or other obligations when their gas runs out. That means maybe 300,000 (on the high side I'd say) people may buy gas one day later than they would have otherwise. To the trillion dollar oil industry, that's not exactly a noticable dent. It's not even a mosquito bite. So by all means, skip your trip to Shell on the 15th. Just don't expect the prices to lower on the 16th.