Intresting message.....

[emerita]

I got this from a friend and thought it was beneficial to pass along.


We CAN buy gasoline that's not from Middle East. Why didn't George W. think of this? Gas rationing in the 80's worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us!

The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor. An interesting thought is to boycott their GAS. Every
time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis.

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the
tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00 - 8/31/01):

Shell............................205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco.........144,332,000 barrels
Exxon /Mobil................130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway...117,740,000 barrels
Amoco.........................62,231,000 barrels

If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION!

Here are some large companies that do NOT import Middle Eastern oil:

Citgo....................0 barrels
Sunoco............. ..0 barrels
Conoco............. ..0 barrels
Sinclair............... 0 barrels
BP/Phillips.......... 0 barrels
Hess...................0 barrels

All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.They report on a monthly basis. Keep this list in your car; share it with friends. Stop paying for terrorism.............
But to have an impact, we need to reach literally hundreds of
millions of gas buyers. If each of us sends this information to ten people, the word will spread.

I was shocked when I read this..I shall be carefull where I buy my gas from now on....

[Micheleh]

I will definitely spread the word on this one! Thanks!

Another big culprit is plastics manufacturers- I try to buy products that have plastics made from plant oils, like soy. They are also more environmentally safe, as they biodegrade harmlessly.

(I also never use bleach, because it degrades into dioxons.... I'm a tree hugger, I admit it.)

[ojai22]

Emerita,


Thanks for posting this. I received this also, and meant to post it here and didn't get to it yet. In light of what's going on in the world, this message should be taken seriously. Thanks again.

[Flamingo Girl]

snopes.com says;


Spurning gasoline from Shell, Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, and Mobil will cut off the funding of terrorists.
Status: False.

Examples:


[Collected on the Internet, 2002]
Nothing is more frustrating to me than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. It turns out that some oil companies import a lot of middle eastern oil and others do not import any. I thought it might be interesting for Americans to know which oil companies are the best to buy their gas from.

Here is the list:

Top 4 companies that import middle eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00 - 8/31/01). By the way, 86% of all middle eastern oil comes from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Shell 205,742,000 barrels of oil
Chevron/Texaco 144,332,000
Exxon/Mobil 130,082,000
Marathon 117,740,000


If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to about $18 billion. That's a lot of money.

Here are some large companies that do not import much Middle Eastern oil:

Citgo 0 barrels of oil
Sunoco 0
Conoco 0
Sinclair 0
Phillips 0
BP Amoco 62,231,000


All this information is available from the Department of Energy and can be easily documented. Refineries located in the U.S. are required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing. They report on a monthly basis.

Keep this list in your car; share it with friends. Stop paying for terrorism!




Origins: If it weren't for all the gross statistical errors and the naïve grasp of oil industry economics exhibited here, this piece might actually have some validity.

Although the message quoted above doesn't address where (outside of the Middle East) we import oil from, many people come away from reading it with the mistaken impression that most of the USA's crude oil is imported from the Middle East. It isn't. According to the most recent figures regarding crude oil imports, only 31% of the USA's imports came from Arab OPEC countries (Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia) in January 2002. The top six countries (by percentage of total USA imports) supplying crude oil to the USA in January 2002 were:

Saudi Arabia: 16.9%
Mexico: 15.1%
Canada: 15.0%
Venezuela: 14.4%
Iraq: 11.4%
Nigeria: 5.9.%


(Henceforth, our definition of "Middle East" will encompass the five countries identified by the U.S. Department of Energy as "Arab OPEC" nations: Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. This definition does not include other oil-exporting countries identifed by the DoE as "Persian Gulf" exporters, such as Bahrain, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.)

Moving along, we find that nearly all of the statistics offered in the piece quoted above are erroneous or outdated:


By the way, 86% of all middle eastern oil comes from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.



Sorry, but no. According to the chart below, straight off the U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) web site, only 56% of the oil exported from the Persian Gulf in 2001 came from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and that figure is probably even lower now that Iraq has cut its oil exports in protest of Israel's recent actions on the West Bank.




Here are some large companies that do not import much Middle Eastern oil:
Citgo 0 barrels of oil
Sunoco 0
Conoco 0
Sinclair 0
Phillips 0
BP Amoco 62,231,000




Wrong again. The DoE tracks oil imports by company each month, and although the raw data are a little hard to follow (fortunately, the DoE also provides an explanation of their symbols), for February 2002 the totals were as follows:


CITGO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the national oil company of Venezuela, so naturally most of its crude oil comes from there. However, in February 2002 CITGO also imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following quantities:
Iraq: 1,342,000 barrels
Kuwait: 437,000 barrels



Conoco imports primarily from Mexico, Venezuela, and Canada, and not from Middle Eastern countries. However, they are planning to merge with Phillips, which does import from Middle Eastern countries (see below).

BP imports from a variety of oil-producing countries, but in February 2002 BP North America also imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following quantities:
Iraq: 470,000 barrels
Kuwait: 415,000 barrels
Saudi Arabia: 2,123,000 barrels
Algeria: 3,853,000 barrels



Phillips also imports from a variety of oil-producing countries, but in February 2002 Phillips imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following quantities:
Iraq: 717,000 barrels
Saudi Arabia: 1,100,000 barrels



Sinclair imports from Canada, not the Middle East.

Sunoco imports primarily from Canada, Angola, and Nigeria, not Middle Eastern countries.
So, "doing the math" and multiplying these monthly figures by $30/barrel and projecting them over the course of a year, supporting only the companies listed above would still be putting $3.76 billion dollars per year in the coffers of Middle Eastern countries.

Statistics aside, the glaring fallacy here is the suggestion that we could possibly buy our gasoline only from these selected companies. This notion is like claiming that we could put the big grocery chains out of business if we all bought our food only from small mom & pop stores, but ignoring the fact that these small shops couldn't possibly come close to supplying all our grocery needs. The oil companies named above are relatively small (which is a large part of the reason why they don't necessarily import from the Middle East) and could not satisfy the demand that would be created if a significant portion of the USA's consumer base were to shun all the largest oil companies, unless they bought up the output of the companies we were supposed to be avoiding in the first place (or, alternatively, unless they raised their prices sky-high).

Moreover, the idea that oil companies sell gasoline only through their branded service stations -- and therefore if you don't buy gasoline from Shell-branded gas stations you're not sending money to Shell (or, by extension, the Middle East) -- is wrong. Oil companies sell their output through a variety of outlets other than their branded stations; as well, by the time crude oil gets from the ground into our gasoline tanks, there's no telling exactly where it came from. (A good deal of the crude oil purchased from Russia, for example, is oil from Iraqi fields sold through Russian middlemen.)

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted:


Economics Prof. Pat Welch of St. Louis University says any boycott of "bad guy" gasoline in favor of "good guy" brands would have some unintended (and unhappy) results.
Although foreign relations wax and wane, Welch says, the law of supply and demand is set in stone. "To meet the sudden demand," he says, "the good guys would have to buy gasoline wholesale from the bad guys, who are suddenly stuck with unwanted gasoline."

So motorists would end up buying Arab oil anyway -- and paying more for it, because they'd be buying it at fewer stations.

And yes, oil companies do buy and sell from one another. Mike Right of AAA Missouri says, "If a company has a station that can be served more economically by a competitor's refinery, they'll do it."

Right adds, "In some cases, gasoline retailers have no refinery at all. Some convenience-store chains sell a lot of gasoline -- and buy it all from somebody else's refinery."

St. Louis University's Welch says, "The e-mail presupposes that you know who the supplier is, and that's not always the case."




Finally, what this scheme proposes is merely a symbolic solution rather than a practical one, because even if the USA stopped importing oil from the Middle East, other countries will still purchase it. (Japan alone, for example, generally buys as much or more oil from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait than the USA does.)

Complex problems rarely lend themselves to simple, painless answers. Simply shifting where we buy gasoline isn't nearly as good a solution as the much tougher choice of sharply curtailing the amount of gasoline we buy.

Last updated: 23 April 2002

[emerita]

Then I guess we are screwed no matter what we do...terrorizm will have a strong foothold no matter what... The American oil companies are making way to much money to care about our country. Terrorists will continue to have their funding and will be able to come here and continue their rampage with our blessings. I need to check on how much oil is pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico. I know it is in the millions every month... but that probably gets shipped out of the country. It is a shame that we can't depend upon the powerful in this country to protect it. They are all out for themselves.
Or the above message is a form of propganda to try and convience us that there is no hope. Maybe put out by the Oil companies themselves so they won't lose money........just a thought.

[Flamingo Girl]

Well, the deal with scopes is, they do the research that no one passing along these e-mails wants to do. If you wanted to, you could do the research into it, and would no doubt come up with the same results.

Now send this to 30 of your closest froends or you'll wake up in the morning with a beanstalk growing from your nostril.

[emerita]

My son told me that we acually probably have enough crude oil being pumped in the US from Alaska, Texas, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to supply our needs....but many years ago for the sake of PR with our neighbors, we sold them oil and bought our oil from other neighbors......was a stupid thing to do, seeing that peace did not last. I imagine the US is too scared to stop it now and become self sufficient. They don't want to step on any toes. Many countries would lose their cashcow if we took a stand.

[Micheleh]

This is why I support non-petroleum based plastics and byproducts, solar and thermal heating (instead of heating oil), solar and wind electric (some power plants use oil), and the development of electric and ethanol vehicles.

No oil is best.

[Senmut]

Of course, were we to become self-sufficient in oil, we wouldn't need to send so much as a penny to the Arabs. i realize that some groups would wail and gnash their teeth in agony at the thought of disturbing a wildflower somewhere, but hey...it would be good for America.
There's nuclear power, too...

[emerita]

Absolutely

[Senmut]

Glad you agree. Let's not forget wind and tidal power.