[Tax-chick]

How do you know where the oil that produced the gas you buy came from? Is there a website where one can order gas made from domestic crude, for home delivery?

[SAJ]

No can do, Tax-chick. There is absolutely no way to tell from which company's crude your gasoline was made, short of possibly a lab analysis...which most times won't do any good in any case. Why is this?

Here's a perfectly typical world oil mkt transaction:

1) 1 MM bbl of Arabian sour crude is lifted in Saudi, sold by Aramco to ExxonMobil
2) BPAmoco, next day, sign a gasoline distribution agreement in, say, Australia
3) BPAmoco find themselves a bit short of feedstock for the South Asia refinery, so swap 500K bbl of WTI in storage in NJ for 550K bbl of ExxonMobil's crude just leaving the Gulf
4) ExxonMobil refine the WTI into RFG II outside Philly
5) CITGO have a problem with their Central Illinois refinery same day and swap ExxonMobil 600K bbl of Orinoco sour on the Gulf for immediate transshipment of 400K of the refined WTI gasoline in Philly
6) On arrival, this gasoline is blended with 100K CITGO purchased outright from Chevron. 7) Two days later, you fill your tank in Chicago at the CITGO station.

Question: whose crude did you buy? Second question: whose gasoline did you buy? Certainly not CITGO's, even though you purchased it at their shop.

Which company are you attempting to boycott, because you didn't succeed in boycotting ANY of these outfits.

[SAJ]

No can do, Tax-chick. There is absolutely no way to tell from which company's crude your gasoline was made, short of possibly a lab analysis...which most times won't do any good in any case. Why is this?

Here's a perfectly typical world oil mkt transaction:

1) 1 MM bbl of Arabian sour crude is lifted in Saudi, sold by Aramco to ExxonMobil
2) BPAmoco, next day, sign a gasoline distribution agreement in, say, Australia
3) BPAmoco find themselves a bit short of feedstock for the South Asia refinery, so swap 500K bbl of WTI in storage in NJ for 550K bbl of ExxonMobil's crude just leaving the Gulf
4) ExxonMobil refine the WTI into RFG II outside Philly
5) CITGO have a problem with their Central Illinois refinery same day and swap ExxonMobil 600K bbl of Orinoco sour on the Gulf for immediate transshipment of 400K of the refined WTI gasoline in Philly
6) On arrival, this gasoline is blended with 100K CITGO purchased outright from Chevron. 7) Two days later, you fill your tank in Chicago at the CITGO station.

Question: whose crude did you buy? Second question: whose gasoline did you buy? Certainly not CITGO's, even though you purchased it at their shop.

Which company are you attempting to boycott, because you didn't succeed in boycotting ANY of these outfits.