by Sam E. Jones

Created on: June 16, 2010

Clearly people are angry about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and they want to vent that anger and frustration at the people that are responsible for causing the worst oil spill in American history, but boycotting BP gas stations is not the way to go about it.

The main reason that boycotting BP gas stations is a bad idea is because in doing so, you will only be hurting Americans that own, or run, or just work at these gas stations. Boycotting the stations won’t hurt BP, because the number of people that would join the boycott would be insufficient to even appear on their bottom line. If you and the other people that patronize a particular BP station boycott that station, what will you hope to accomplish? The only real affect you might have is causing that station to go out of business causing the owner and his employees to lose their jobs. How is that hurting BP?

Additionally, you have to consider the fact that cleaning up the oil spill is going to cost an awful lot of money. If people did manage to band together and form a movement, and it spread all across this country, or perhaps even around the world, then yes, that would definitely hurt BP; but would that be a good idea if we expect BP to fix the mess it’s made? It is going to need all the cash it can get its hands on because oil companies are heavily investment oriented companies. They don’t just keep cash lying around to toss at problems should they arise. To come up with the kinds of cash that are going to be needed to clean up the gulf BP is going to needs the cash income from its gas stations, otherwise it will have to divest some of its inventory, which could take a considerable amount of time, during which, the cleanup would be stalled.

Also, you have to consider the long term impact of boycotting an establishment that you normally would patronize and how it might affect you and your own future. For example, why have you been patronizing that particular station and not another? Is it easier, cheaper; more convenient? If you boycott them, and then others do as well, you could very well put the owner of that establishment out of business and then you won’t have what you had before and you’ll be left without while BP continues to operate as hit always has.

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