GAS PRICES - CANADA

[H]

Dear friends & family,

It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a Litre 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, this is a plan that can really work.
Please read it and join with us!



We all know that we're being controlled by the oil companies. Does everyone
remember how they drove up the prices way past a dollar and got the gas
prices to where they wanted them, claiming there was a shortage of oil.
Well, there isn't any shortage now, and the oil is more abundant than it was
35 years ago when the price of a litre of gas was 29 cents!!!




Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think
that the cost of a litre of gas is CHEAP at $0.78-$0.85, 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 cant 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), PETRO CANADA, SHELL. 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 PETRO CANADA and
SHELL buyers. Its really simp! le to do!! Now, don't whimp out on me at this
point...keep reading and Ill explain how simple it is to reach millions of
people!!




I am sending this note to at least 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. That's all.




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!!! Ill bet you I 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 $0.64 OR LESS RANGE AND
KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK!!!!!!!

 

[Bryce]

Whatever.

 

[Juan Vado]

Not again. I guess it's because it worked so well the last
time. NOT!

Best defence against high gas prices: a bicycle.

<brit>On yer bike!</brit>

 

[Cam Penner]

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from
the two biggest companies (which now are one), PETRO CANADA, SHELL. If they
are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If

Or, better yet, think this all the way through. If you
aren't so inclined, are a bit lazy, or lack basic education
in the economic theories of supply and demand, take the
short cut and read this:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/gasout.htm

Then stop wasting your breath. Get a more fuel efficient
vehicle, join a carpool, drive less, go easier on the right
hand pedal, or in some other such way reduce the amount of
gas you consume.

It's the only thing that will work.

 

[Carl 1 Lucky Texan]

If it was $10 a gallon you'd still buy it and you know it.

Carl

 

[Rick Courtright]

Want gasoline prices to come down?

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Gas prices aren't going up just in Canada, eh? (Today's price for lowest
grade, name brand in my neighborhood: $2.79/gal and going up a nickel or
more a day.)

Here's a packet of ideas that could work far better than shifting the
sales from one company to another without cutting consumption (where do
you think the lesser brands either already, or will have to, get their
gas anyway? The world's only got so much refinery capacity!), all based
on our "typical" SoCal lifestyle which is certainly the breeding ground
for so many cliches:

Cut your consumption. Get rid of that big fat SUV you THINK you need to
haul your big fat wife and your big fat kids around in. Get a smaller
car (life actually DID exist and we managed to move people before
Excursions, Navigators and all the other variations of Chevy Chase's
"Family Truckster"), and quit feeding 'em so much junk so they'll fit in
it. Hauling weight takes fuel, whether it's the basic vehicle or its
contents.

Quit driving so damned much. If the trip's just a few blocks, which so
many are, use what God gave you: your feet! Either directly touching the
pavement, or for longer ventures, to pedal a bicycle. Not only does it
save fuel, it might actually prove to be healthy, heaven forbid! The
little lardbuckets want a Happy Meal? Make 'em walk to Mickey D's to get
it... and go with 'em yourself, both for their safety and to burn one or
two of those extra calories you've consumed yourself.

Plan your trips. How many times do you take off each week for a separate
trip that COULD be combined with another? Shop with friends, neighbors
or family. One person in the car going to the store to buy a single
bag's worth of groceries or the mall to buy a single top is hardly a
resource wise move.

Stay home! Do you really HAVE to take off and put a few hundred miles on
almost every weekend? Try doing something at or at least much closer to
home. You spent close to a half mil on that house way out there in what
used to be the middle of nowhere: enjoy your investment while you can
still afford gas to commute a zillion miles to pay for it.

Cut the commute where you can. Carpooling is basically a failure because
too many people are going their own ways at their own times, but you can
still look for ridesharing info and see what you can do with a minimum
amount of compromise to your schedule. Even if only a day or two per
week, it all helps.

Don't let your kids have cars until they can afford to buy, feed and
insure them on their own. It's pretty easy to pile up the miles when Dad
and Mom are footing the bills. And most kids today do about as much
"necessary" driving as most of us did when we were their ages--NOT much!
Yeah, they'll think they're gonna die without a car. If they actually
do, I guess they weren't tough enough to live in society anyway?

Buy your gas only with cash. No credit cards. You're gonna find it a lot
harder to part with a $50 or even $100 bill to fill that big tank than
to just sign your name. It might make you think about your trips and
plan better?

And here's one that oughta make some people think, and irritate others:
QUIT buying so much stuff from China! We've turned them into an economic
powerhouse that has become, according to biz pages in local paper, the
LARGEST consumer of ALL raw materials except oil in the world, and they
were responsible for 40% of last year's increased oil demand, so they're
on their way to replacing the US as the oil hog of the universe. Even if
we DO succeed in cutting our consumption in the West, prices won't drop
much as demand from Asia rises to use whatever we don't--don't forget
China's got at least five times the population of the US, so it wouldn't
take much for them to knock us out of the top spot. It's the myth of
conservation we see in too many areas: I try to save resources,
supposedly cuz they're limited, only to have the seller turn around and
sell whatever I "saved" to another customer and usually at a higher
price to both of us. Net effect, zero reduction in usage, negative
impact on my personal economy. But if we're gonna stay joined at the hip
with China, we should at least learn one lesson from them: we CAN'T keep
breeding AND continue consuming at the rate we do. Oil's a limited
resource, regardless of the price or ability to pay. We add more people,
each of us can have less. It's simple arithmetic, not rocket science.
Must we do as the Chinese and mandate only one child per family? There's
a proposal that oughta get everybody riled up.

In the mean time, teach your kids they're the last generation that's
gonna be able to have cars in the sense we've been accustomed to. Soon
they'll be too expensive for most of the world to buy and/or run. Get
'em thinking of how they can live a less car-dependent lifestyle, cuz
it's coming, probably in their lifetimes even.

Or you can do as a buddy suggests: forget all the above, and burn
gasoline as fast as you possibly can so we'll run out of oil faster and
force the hands of government and industry to come up with a better
alternative.

But in the end, we'll all do just as we're doing right now: not make ANY
changes in habits or lifestyle because we can't POSSIBLY do with less
(image and all, you know), bitch about prices (of everything, since it's
all related to the cost of fuel one way or another) and try to convince
the world it's all a big conspiracy brought upon us by the evil oil
companies, shifting the blame from our own wasteful habits. Uh, huh...
until we force ourselves to do the same with less, nothing's gonna
change. Get used to high prices. And eventually less availability.
Anyone remember the '70s?

Rick

 

[hippo]

H wrote:

Well, there isn't any shortage now, and the oil is more abundant than it
was
35 years ago when the price of a litre of gas was 29 cents!!!

<snip>

Shortage is a relative word, but it's hard to see how any non-renewable
resource could be more plentiful now than 35 years ago when so many
billion litres have been used. Yes there have been new discoveries but the
loss of most of Mexico's probably offsets that. It's more that they can now
exploit reserves that were previously uneconomical.

If petrol truly was 29/L in Canada 35 years ago, you probably have the
only resource on the planet that's gone up by a factor of 4 - 5 in a third
of a century, compared with the more usual 14 - 20+ range.

Just out of interest, what's your average fuel use in L/100km? If it's
worse than 10, why?

BTW, if you sent this to "at least 30 people" and all your respondents are
in Australia (like me), or the UK or USA (like some of the other
respondents) where Petro Canada doesn't operate, I don't like your
chances!

Finally, this could only work if your boycott also bypasses any possiblity
of using a station supplied wholly or in part by one of those corporations.
Does every label in Canada have their own independent refinery? Cheers

 

[Coggo]

If it was $10 a gallon you'd still buy it and you know it.

Carl

Quite so,

Standard unleaded fuel is $1.10 - 1.20 per LITRE down here in Oz (that's
over $4.00 per gallon). Premium for my turbo Forester is up to $1.30 per
litre. Ordinary diesel fuel (cheapest to produce) for my old truck is up to
$1.20 per litre.

My answer ... STAY HOME!! I am doing less driving than ever before, only
going out when essential.

I remember when cigarettes were 30 cents a packet - now up to $10. People
used to say "When cigarettes reach $xxx I will give up!!" Of course they
didn't - and people didn't HAVE to smoke. We have dug our own grave with
motor vehicles - maybe it's time to bring back horses!!!

Cheers

Dave

 

[John Rethorst]

Here's a packet of ideas

Good ones.

QUIT buying so much stuff from China!

Hard to do.

We should do something though, especially since China pegs its currency
artificially low.

The US may not need a textile industry, in the strategic sense, and that's good
since we no longer have one. We do need a steel industry in that sense, though,
and we won't have one much longer.

 

[Frank Logullo]

Dear friends & family,

It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a Litre by the
summer.

How much is that in real money?

 

[Kurt C. Hack]

$1.42 CAD = $1.14929 USD
1 Gallon = 3.7854118 Liters
$1.14929 * 3.7854118 = $4.35053593 USD per gallon

 

[Kurt C. Hack]

Sounds rather odd, but I say keep raising the price! The only way to
drive alternative energy research is for demand from the consumer. This
drive can only be fueled (no pun intended) by lowering supply, thus
raising the price.

-Kurt

 

[Carl 1 Lucky Texan]

Just bought a bicycle myself. Maybe use it to return rented movies or
pickup a loaf of bread once in a while. We will probably try to combine
trips a little more, think ahead when shopping etc. But I doubt it'll
affect how much gas I buy very much. I've leaned 3 universal truths in
my life; men want sex, mothers love their children and Texans will not
park their cars and trucks and use mass transit!

I wonder what the rate of gasoline TAX increase would look like charted
over the last 20-30 years? Our .9 cent/gallon was the original tax I
think - now we're at 35cents per! And it was intended to pay for roads
and bridges but seems like most new roads and bridges all have toll
collection nowadays.

Carl

 

[Tom Reingold]

How much is that in real money?

Current exchange rates at: http://www.xe.com

 

[SmokedMeat]

In Québec (Canada), around 47% of the price per litre is taxes...

 

[Rat]

Dear friends & family,

It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a Litre by the
summer.

So what is that, 27 cents a gallon US? Big deal.

 

[Hallan Blaggit]

You mean in Euros?

It's about 0.87

How much is that in real money?

 

[Frank Logullo]

Current exchange rates at: http://www.xe.com

Two thins to envy 'bout Noo Joizy, low gaz tax and dey even pump it for
youse. If dy'ed take da tolls off the bridges, I'd drive there for the gaz
which is 10-20 cents/gal cheaper than here in Delawar.

 

[Frank Logullo]

Dear friends & family,

It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a Litre by the
summer.
Want gasoline prices to come down?

To quote what one of your French Canadians told me many years ago, "La tax."

 

[Freedom55]

Quite so,

Standard unleaded fuel is $1.10 - 1.20 per LITRE down here in Oz (that's
over $4.00 per gallon). Premium for my turbo Forester is up to $1.30 per
litre. Ordinary diesel fuel (cheapest to produce) for my old truck is up to
$1.20 per litre.

My answer ... STAY HOME!! I am doing less driving than ever before, only
going out when essential.

I remember when cigarettes were 30 cents a packet - now up to $10. People
used to say "When cigarettes reach $xxx I will give up!!" Of course they
didn't - and people didn't HAVE to smoke. We have dug our own grave with
motor vehicles - maybe it's time to bring back horses!!!

Cheers

Dave

Anyone got a Smart Car?

--
And it really doesn't matter if
I'm wrong I'm right
Where I belong I'm right
Where I belong.

Lennon & McCartney