As the gulf of Mexico oil spill 2010 continues unabated, a

BP operate under Castrol here so ill join in. im boycotting israeli goods too so this shouldnt be too much extra work. however people cannot just boycott the BP label. they also own Castoroil, ARCO stations, AM/PM stations, Air BP avaition fuels , Aral stations, Amoco stations, Gulf stations amongst others

Unfortunately, by boycotting BP service stations you are also hurting the owner/operators and employees of those stores who are innocent bystanders in this and had no hand in what happened.

Indeed.  Boycotting BP is not going to do a thing to the executives and the high-level policy makers of the company.  It will only hurt the lower-level people who have bought franchise rights or other such folks.

It seems idiotic to boycott a company that has suffered an unforseen accident. Why not boycott companies or countries that have proven human rights issues or similar bad work practices?

Mr R - 10 June 2010 06:29 AM

It seems idiotic to boycott a company that has suffered an unforseen accident. Why not boycott companies or countries that have proven human rights issues or similar bad work practices?

Well, there has been some news that perhaps the whole mess may have been avoidable, due to improper regard for safety, cutting corners, etc. Still, yes, I feel they are being rather unfairly demonized.

I think that a boycott of BP is more than justified, and since the ocean is not isolated to the US, the boycott should have been worldwide. The argument that the boycott would only hurt small business owners, does not hold water in my opinion. I think these small business owners should have been the first to initiate the boycott. I’m sure other companies would have been more than happy to sell them fuel. The unfortunate thing about all of this, is that it is already forgotten. Even though the damages that has been done will last many generations, we have already forgotten about it. The American people have such a short attention span, that we could never be persistent enough to make any real difference.
masters of public administration

monkeyspoon - 25 April 2011 01:51 PM

I think that a boycott of BP is more than justified, and since the ocean is not isolated to the US, the boycott should have been worldwide. The argument that the boycott would only hurt small business owners, does not hold water in my opinion. I think these small business owners should have been the first to initiate the boycott. I’m sure other companies would have been more than happy to sell them fuel. The unfortunate thing about all of this, is that it is already forgotten. Even though the damages that has been done will last many generations, we have already forgotten about it. The American people have such a short attention span, that we could never be persistent enough to make any real difference.

It didn’t make any difference. I bought shares in BP after the accident, and now I am showing a profit.

Even though it is a very necro-topic I’ll bite!

Boycotting of BP would be short-sighted at the least, and actually produce the opposite effect at worst.  After all, Gas is gas. it doesn’t carry a “label” in or on it.  If one store, or chain of stores switch to another “brand”, all that would happen is that BP would then sell their refines gas to that company (at a profit) who would then sell it to their “new” customers at yet another, higher profit.  So the person/groups boycotting just end up paying more for the very same gas they would have bought anyway.  BP sees no downside.  They will make their profit either way. (It could, in fact, be argued that selling to the other ‘label’ would actually increase BP’s profit margin through easier shipment, large scale economics of production/delivery, etc.)

Drilling for oil IS going to happen.  The greater demand is, the more extreme the recovery of oil is going to become.  The higher the price of oil, the more ways it will be developed. (Take oil sands as an example. At $2 a gallon, it just isn’t economical to dig up, separate the oil, and process. At $4 a gallon, it is.  This is one reason our president said early on that he wanted gas at above $4 a gallon. It might make many of the alternatives to oil economical to use/produce.)

Yes you’re probably better off protesting in support of laws regarding deep sea drilling. Oil is so ubiquitous it probably wouldn’t be effective to boycott the BP resellers.

As for me this might sound off topic but I’m thinking my next car will have to be a hybrid or some other alternative.

monkeyspoon - 25 April 2011 01:51 PM

The argument that the boycott would only hurt small business owners, does not hold water in my opinion.

The people at the lower levels of the system are dependent on whatever amount of money the customers give them at their particular fuel station or whatever.  If there is a boycott, then these people will not be having customers giving them that money.  They will therefore be financially hurt.

The people at the top levels of the company don’t have their income based on how much they sell, or dependent on sales in one or two locations.  Their income is probably fixed, and is supplied by all of the oil sold everywhere in the world.  Any boycott won’t have much effect on them at all.

The company itself might lose sales in the region where the boycott is going on, but oil is an essential item.  They can always just sell more elsewhere in the world.  They might take a minor overall loss for a short while, but that’s it.

To really hurt the company itself or its higher-ups, you’d need to have a major boycott all over the world with nobody buying any oil at all.  And that’s not likely to happen, because then everybody would be hurt when food prices rise and electricity prices rise and so on.

The best way for the public to do something about what BP does, then, is to build up public support for some sort of legal actions.