Fuel Boycotts Don’t Work

Here are some boycotts tried in the past and the reasons why they cannot succeed:

• Let’s all not buy any fuel on Friday 26 June

  This would work if everybody gave up the use of their car for a day, but if people had any other form of transport they would already be using it. In practice people just fill up the day before or the day after, or change their journey to another day. Overall they don’t reduce their fuel consumption.

• Let’s all boycott BP/Esso etc.

  These particular two companies supply lots of supermarkets and independent dealerships- just because it doesn’t say BP on the pump doesn’t mean it isn’t BP petrol coming out. Go from BP to Morrisons and you are still buying BP petrol. In addition, any boycott would have minimal effect on a larger company.

• Let’s all boycott BP this month, then Esso next month then Shell the next month etc.

  Over a year, they will all still sell the same amount of fuel. What they lose while being boycotted they will gain in the other months.

The oil companies love us wasting our time with the above boycotts because they stop us realising what will work.

All the above boycotts have one overall weakness – the sales taken off one supplier are spread over all the others.

The result? - one “down-but-not-really-bothered” company and seven “slightly-up-but-also-not-really-bothered” companies.

By diverting sales from all the others to one selected company, we get one happy company, and seven unhappy companies. If we can persuade one company to reduce its prices, the others will follow suit. By choosing a company with national coverage, we can bring down the price of fuel across the country. And it’s more satisfying to upset seven oil companies instead of just one.

Vote with your wheels and join us today