May 27, 2010 General 1

I know somebody who has a permanent boycott of exxon to this day after valdez.  This same person intends to do the same to BP.  There’s one problem… just because you buy your gas at say….citgo or BP or anywhere else…doesn’t mean they only sell citgo gas.  If you watch the gas station it’ll most likely NOT be a citgo, bp, exxon..etc etc tanker.  The reason is that gas in this country isn’t sold directly from the refinery to the stations…it goes through regional distributors who then have to distribute it.  This means it’s very likely an Exxon station will get bp sourced gas…it’ll just have Exxon’s blend of detergents and additives thrown in by the distributor.  this is the same for BP or any other major branded station.  So you aren’t relaly going to hurt BP’s or any other oil company’s profits directly..you WILL be hurting the small business owner who just happens to have a BP brand.  If he shuts down BP will loose the franchise revenue..but that’s peanuts compared to that they make otherwise.