Many people have likely seen an email or post on Facebook, saying people should stage a “gas boycott” and avoid pumps for a day to drive down costs. That message continues to circulate, in spite of the fact that gas boycotts never work. Article resource:Gas boycott emails still circulating, still dead wrong.



Old saw not giving up the ghost



Annually, gas costs go up, people grumble over it, people who have nothing to do with gas costs are blamed for them, and new life is breathed into an old chain email. The email goes something like this: One day, in the late 1990s, a bunch of people in a sleepy small town somewhere in the Midwest or Canada didn’t purchase gasoline for a whole day and the price dropped by 30 cents overnight. Therefore, do not purchase gasoline on a given date and we will profit.



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It’s been making the rounds for some time. There are, for example, recent reports of the fuel boycott email appearing in inboxes in Canada, according to the Windsor Star. A post from April, 2011, discusses it on AOL Autos, and it has been floating around, according to Snopes.com, since at least 2000.



Not real life



Evidence does not support things such as the gas boycott and urban legends, but that does not stop them from existing. Just a little bit of a story is enough to keep it going.



The point of a gas boycott is to not go to the pump. The idea is that if demand drops, fuel stations will drop their prices. The hitch is that fuel stations, according to USA Today, don’t make much cash selling gasoline. About 75 percent of their profits are from markups on Pepsi and Cheetos. The Association of Food and Petroleum Dealers, a trade group for gas station owners, reports that if a gasoline station sells 18 gallons of unleaded at $3.909 per gallon, just $2.99 of the $70.36 they make is profit, roughly 4.25 percent. Not much of a margin.



Also, according to the Buffalo News, on top of state and federal taxes fuel stations have to pay, up to 7 cents per gallon goes to credit card corporations in the form of swipe fees because many people pay with debit or charge cards.



Reasons for gasoline price changes



Regular publications are issued by the Energy Info Administration, part of the Department of Energy, which explains the trends in nationwide gasoline prices.



The biggest factor in the price of gasoline has always been and will always be the crude oil it’s made from, which accounted for 72 percent of the cost of gas as of Feb. 2012. That cost has been going steadily up, as the EIA reports crude oil accounted for 53 percent of the cost of gas in 2000 and 68 percent last year.



Sources



Windsor Star

USA Today

Buffalo News

AOL Autos: http://autos.aol.com/article/social-media-gas-boycotts/

Snopes on the gas boycott email: http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas.asp

EIA: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=22&t=6