Don't complain about your prices. I live in a major Canadian city,
known as The Oil Capital of Canada. The oil fields are a short, as in
minutes, drive from my door, Likewise three major refineries.  Street
price of gas here is $103.4 / liter or $3.45 USD per US gal.  Thanks
to NAFTA I pay exorbitant prices  ( read "world market" ie US price)
for the natural gas to heat my home (cold climate up here) because
you folks in CA use a few megatons of it to heat your pools and AC
your houses etc.

  As to a boycott... limit it to one brand. Sure they'll still sell
gas to the independents and cross supply contracts. But how long do
you think it would take for the branded outlets to raise hell with
head office if nobody bought gas from them?
On 19-Apr-06, at 12:14 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Wed, 19 Apr 2006 09:43:33 -0700
> From:    Old Volks Home <oldvolkshome@GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: Gas price war
>
> I doubt a boycott of Exxon or Mobil stations would really make a dent.
> Because refining is so tightly consolidated (especially here in
> California
> with just a few refineries), whatever refined product that's not
> delivered
> to their stations end up being sold and marketed to the smaller
> independent=
> s
> (without the proprietary blend of course).  People are gonna need
> gasoline
> to do what they have to do.  There's so much collusion between the oil
> companies that a boycott would have to be massive and continuous
> for a long
> time for them to seriously take notice.
>
> I'm getting ready for a cross-country trip in Ole Putt at the end
> of the
> month for two weeks.  Because of the crazy jump in gas prices, I've
> had to
> allocate over $1K just in gas expenses alone.  As of last night,
> the local
> ARCO here in Ventura, CA is $2.89, while the
> Chevron/Texaco/Exxon/Mobil/Valero/USA stations are averaging around
> $3.00 t=
> o
> $3.05.  It's a good thing Ole Putt is mostly a stationary living
> quarters
> rather than my primary mode of transport.