I know how you feel.  You’re mad as heck at BP for the way they’ve handled the Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and you want them to really feel your dissatisfaction.  So, what have you done about it?

Maybe you’ve thought of picketing the BP gas station on Lexington Rd. on the way to downtown Louisville.  That’ll show them, right?  At the least, you’re going to boycott their filling stations and convenience stores in hopes that a dwindling bottom line will ruin the hefty profits that they usually rake in every year, right?  Wrong.

Consumer protests actually have no real effect on BP’s bottom line.  In fact, when people do boycott BP stations, the only people that end up getting hurt are the innocent gas station operators that have nothing to do with the oil spill.  As the New York Times pointed out…

“BP doesn’t actually own any gas stations. It licenses the BP brand out to independent station owners in a franchise model, and collects a relative pittance from the deals. So if you withhold your business from your local BP station, you’re really only hurting the local businessman or chain who owns that particular store. And what they’re being punished for is the mistake of signing up with BP instead of ExxonMobil or Sunoco.”

Oil is a globally traded comodity and there is just no way to be sure which company is responsible for the gas that goes into your car.  It only becomes BP-branded gas when additives are put in, usually at the filling station.  And if BP runs into a surplus of those ingredients, it’s very easy for them to just sell them off to other stations.

Sorry folks…the only real way to hurt BP’s pockets are to quit using petroleum based products all together.  And I’m not sure if the majority of the public is ready for that.  What do you think?