CNN news 2010-06-22
Josh, join us to break down what happens to the poll, people don't realized BP doesn't own a single BP gas station in the country.
They don't know any of them which is very important to understand. Another things to know is that a lot of these local gas station owners have locked into this very, very long term contract, years years with which ever company, ah, basically their brand, so they just jump out that with cost of tons of money; they can't just give up, being BP without giving up their livelihood and paying a lot of money that day. Let me talk to you through this because I was looking online to see where is there a great article that can lay this out for you; the Chicago Tribune flooded to them, they did great job. I will show you something then in the article that they have um, they put kind of boycotting BP gas station just as there were, just does not hurt BP’s coffers much at least directly, then they point out where we’re just talking about. It doesn’t own the BP stations; now I was looking the numbers; it’s about 11,000 BP stations in America. BP like a lot of oil giants gave up owning those local stations directly a while back; so you’re not directly hitting their coffers that way.
Now here is another important point, because oil is a globally traded commodity, there is no easy way to confirm which company is responsible for the gas you buy, meaning you go to a quick trip, you go to another station you’re maybe getting oil that was from one of BP’s oils anyway or you might be not from a BP station and um, one of the point at the other side here because they also in this article talked to a guy who was a republican citizen; he says the target here is the image of the company. So they are those who say yes we understand exactly how the money works but we feel that boycotting makes a lot of sense at this point because it sends message to the company which ultimately hurts the company and its image in general; so that debate continues, that said it’s also a fact that financial you got some of this local station owners now for taking the brunt of this, just help you understand I have got the story linked for you, it’s up on Facebook and Twitter, on my page Josh Levs CNN hearing from you as well your thoughts and all sides of this. So TJ, hopefully people have a pretty good sense now how this works, how that oil gets to your station and just know that even if you skip BP station, you might still have oil from BP well wherever you go.
And a very important point to make and I know people admittedly want to lash out at BP, that is the quickest and easiest way to do it with a boycott, but again Josh, it's still important to know BP doesn't now own a single one of those gas stations. It’s owned by your neighbor, your friends, your teachers and everybody in your community, um but Josh we appreciate that breakdown, very necessary this morning.