I have gotten the email about May 15th from quite a lot of people and I always feel I should say something. Growing up, my parents both work for a major oil company (one still does) and because of that, I have, perhaps, a better-than-average understanding of the way this industry works.

This plan is totally ineffective. The business model of the oil industry pretty much precludes anything like this ever having an effect. Snopes.com (an urban legend site) has an article on this particular one: www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas.asp

Incidentally (and in brief) - the current upsurge in prices is largely attributed to a combination of the summer season (always a higher demand this time of year which causes price to go up) and the up-tick in futures trading spiked by the potential for war with Iran. This is a very volatile market and every time a supply shortage rumor goes around, oil futures prices skyrocket. The oil companies make a huge profit, but they can't do anything about it because it's a public marketplace that they have literally no control over.

Sorry to disappoint :(

Maybe the amateur economists can explain this to me, then.

I'm not an economist, nor do I play one on television. But from what I remember, profit is what you get when you subtract expenses from revenue. So, Caroline, if the "current upsurge in prices" is from increased oil costs, shouldn't that mean that the oil companies' profits should be about the same? Their expenses went up and they passed that on to the customer. Thus, revenues go up and expenses go up and profits remain the same, right?

Now, obviously, there's more to gasoline prices than just the price of a barrel of oil, as witnessed by the fact that several months ago, the price of oil was going down while the cost of gasoline was going up. We also have the refineries.

The current problem is being blamed on various refineries being shut down for maintenance and to change over to the various "summer formulas" that help keep down pollution during summer months.

In other words, the gasoline companies are providing less gasoline and charging more for it. Thus, they have record profits.

Now, creating more refineries would allow oil companies to have more insurance against unexpected problems, maintenance, and the like. But, of course, the oil companies will tell us that the problem is NIMBY--they'd love to create more refineries but no-one wants one in their backyard and it's a battle to get any refinery built. There's some truth to that. But the other point is that the oil companies don't want to build more refineries because that lessens their profits. After all, if gasoline is plentiful, by the laws of supply and demand, it must also be cheap. So the oil companies would end up spending money to build more refineries and end up making less money selling gasoline. That'd be a tough thing to explain to the shareholders--"Let's spend money so we can make less money!"

It's also interesting because, with less refining capacity, the oil companies have to buy less oil. After all, why buy oil if you can't refine it into worthwhile products because you don't have the refinery capacity? So there's less expenses because they're buying less oil. So they less expenses in oil and they get to charge more for the gasoline because the refineries can't produce enough.

So the laws of supply and demand don't necessarily work here. It's more profitable to provide less gasoline and charge more than it is to provide more gasoline and charge less.

Anyway, I agree that the May 15th "Don't Buy Gas" protest is useless. Instead, consider that May 14-18 is Bike to Work Week and May 17th is Bike to Work Day. So instead of not buying gas, take a day or the whole week and reduce your gasoline usage.

I'm down here in Orange County and I bike 14 miles to work and back (28 miles total) two days a week. Next week, I'm going try to bike every day. I was considering a job up in LA and was happy to discover that I could bike to Long Beach and then catch the subway from there and the distance wouldn't be much more (though I'd be adding a 45 minute subway ride). Where there's a will, there's a way.

If you're not into biking, consider just driving to mass-transit to try it out. Like I said, I was pretty surprised to discover that the subway would drop me off about a block from where the new job is--convenient walking distance. Check out MTA's maps and try it out one day next week. You might find you like it.

A buddy of mine is doing something fun--he's renting one of those cute little electric cars for the week to try it out. He figures he should be able to make it to work and back and he wants to see how having one will affect the lifestyle he's come to know and love.

So if you want to get into the spirit of it, pick a day (or the whole week) and see how little gasoline you can use. By reducing the demand for gasoline to fit the reduced refinery capacity, you'll do more for lowering gasoline prices than you will by offsetting your purchase by a day.