The idea expressed in this email was that they wanted to mess with the gas companies' supply chain, because they count on moving a certain amount of product every day. Snopes and everyone seem to ignore that part. Otherwise, you're right that it is still stupid. I doubt their supply chain management is so rigid as all that, that they'd have no place to store their gas. Besides that, I think snopes' best point is that it doesn't hurt OPEC as they want, it hurts Citgo and the like (if anybody at all) whose prices only fluctuate with their costs. Why would we even want to do that?
I thought MadMax meant that Behad didn't work anywhere. If Behad had asked who issues his paycheck, I think MadMax could have answered.
The plan to not buy gasoline on May 19 is flawed. <hr color=red> <a HREF="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/84632/1/.html">Oil prices soar to new 1990 high points as US gasoline stocks slide</a> <i>LONDON : Oil prices surged to new 13-year high points after the latest snapshot of US inventories showed an unexpectedly sharp fall in gasoline stocks. The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for June delivery rose 22 cents to 37.58 dollars in late afternoon trading here. Advertisement New York's reference light sweet crude for June delivery climbed 24 cents to 40.30 dollars in early deals. Following publication of the stocks data, Brent crude reached a new 13-year high point of 37.82 dollars, while New York prices soared to 40.55 dollars -- the highest levels since October 1990, when Iraq rolled into Kuwait ahead of the 1991 Gulf War. The new surge in prices came as the International Energy Agency called on suppliers to pump more crude, saying booming economic growth around the world was spurring demand for oil at the fastest rate for 16 years. The Paris-based organisation raised its 2004 oil demand forecast by 330,000 barrels per day to 80.6 million bpd. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meanwhile said it may meet next week to discuss the possibility of raising the cartel's output quotas in a bid to help cool prices. <b> The US Department of Energy (DoE) said stocks of gasoline, or petrol, fell by 1.5 million barrels to 202.5 million in the week ending May 7. A rival study by the private American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a decline of 1.6 million barrels to 194.2 million, while analysts had predicted an increase of 2.0 million barrels. The DoE meanwhile said crude oil stocks rose by 1.1 million barrels to 300 million in the week to May 7, the API said they fell 2.1 million barrels to 298.1 million, while analysts forecast a rise of 1.7 million barrels. The DoE said also that US refineries were running at 96 percent of total capacity, up from 93 percent the previous week, as they battled to keep up with demand by turning crude into gasoline. Traders are worried about low inventories of US gasoline ahead of the so-called "summer driving season" in the United States that begins on May 31, when motorists flock to the open roads for their vacations. "The principle reason for strong prices is that the market is tight," said Leo Drollas, from the Centre for Global Energy Studies. "Stocks remain very low, especially in the United States," he said Wednesday before the latest oil stocks data was published. </b> "The turmoil in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, is obviously a factor (behind surging prices)," Drollas also said. "There are real reasons to worry about interruptions to supply," he noted, after tanker loadings from Iraq's main southern port of Basra were briefly halved by sabotage of one of the terminal's two feeder pipelines last Sunday. Indonesian Oil Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro, who is president and secretary general of OPEC, meanwhile said the cartel's ministers would take advantage of their presence at an International Energy Forum meeting in Amsterdam next week "to review the world oil market situation". OPEC, which produces about a third of the world's crude oil, had agreed in March to cut output by one million bpd to reduce total production to 23.5 million from April 1, in a move to prop up prices with demand expected to fall in spring in the northern hemisphere. Yusgiantoro said that although OPEC had cut its official production, the 10 OPEC nations in the quota system, in which Iraq is not counted, have "recently been producing over two million barrels per day in excess of that ceiling". "We have not discouraged our members from producing more because we want to do everything we can to stabilize prices," he said.</i> <hr color=red> Since this thread is in the Hangout Forum, I won't treat it like a D&D thread.
