Boycott Call As Petrol Prices Soar
MOTORISTS are being urged to vote with their cars and boycott service stations today in protest against rising petrol prices.
The price of 91 octane has passed $1.50 a litre, prompting a chain e-mail declaring September 5 as “Stick it up their bum day”.
In some rural areas of the South Island, prices for 91 petrol rose to more than $1.60 a litre.
“Waiting for this government to step in and control prices is not going to happen and there is an election coming, so why not throw them into a panic?” the e-mail says.
The campaign was started by angry members of the Christchurch Holden Enthusiasts’ Club last week. They began by urging people nationwide to boycott the main oil companies on one day each week, starting with BP on Mondays, followed by Caltex, Mobil, Challenge and Shell.
The message says the action would cost the companies concerned $90 million a day.
Neither Labour nor National intends to remove the petrol tax rise imposed in April and oil prices affect every area of consumers’ lives, the e-mail says.
“Enough of these ridiculous excuses that the oil companies use to justify their increases — everything from President Bush missing a golf stroke on the 9th hole to Aunt Fanny’s artificial leg falling off.”
If no one bought petrol today, oil companies could “choke on their stockpiles”.
“At the same time it would hit the entire industry with a net loss at the current prices of $1.50 per litre (30 litres for a full tank) $45 x a conservative estimate of 2,000,000 vehicles in NZ, that would equate to $90 million loss (one day) to the oil companies and hit their profit margins.”
But would oil companies really lose that much if Kiwis did not fill up?
Total petrol consumption for the year ending March 2005 was about 3.2 billion litres — about 8.8 million litres a day. If each litre cost $1.50, the average spend per day would be about $13 million.
Mobil spokesman Peter Thornbury said the calculations used in the e-mail “assumed every single vehicle in New Zealand will be filling up to a full amount” today.
“It’s like saying that everyone shops on the same day and everyone uses the phone on one day.” It was impossible to say what impact a boycott would have on oil companies, he said. But if motorists did not fill up today, they were likely to do so tomorrow.
As for the possibility of companies cho king on their stockpiles, fuel demand varied and the system was “fairly robust to deal with variations”.
New Zealand’s petrol prices were consistently among the cheapest in the OECD.
Caltex spokeswoman Kim Woodgate said the e-mail was a variant of one that had previously circulated. “We have not seen any impact on demand to this date.”