[Rodney King]

First, per your previous message, I am cranky for reasons that have nothing to do with this, so I am sorry if I seemed rude. But anyway, here is an example you might be able to better get your hands around:

A guy named Osama grows grain in Kansas. After he harvests his grain, he sells it to the local grain tower. 100 other farmers sell to this same local tower, and all the grain gets mixed together.

Along comes Kellogs. They buy up all the grain from this tower, as well as towers all over the midwest, and they mix it all up together. So Osamas grain is mixed up with the grain of tens of thousands of others. Kellog makes wheaties with this grain.

Later, Osama blows up a building. Kellog's announces "we've never bought any grain from Osama, our cereal is Osama free!"

They have never written Osama a check, but they have no way of knowing one way or another if Osamas grain is in their cereal.

The same is largley the case with Crude Oil. It gets all jumbled together in the midstream and downstrem processes, and there is really no way to say where the gasoline in your tank comes from.

[AnnaZ]

I do, and did, understand the analogy. Thanks, though, for taking the time to explain it further. (Like the "no animal testing" thing on products... the final product might not have been tested on animals, but each separate ingredient within it most definitely was.) But anyway...

I find it hard to believe that a company couldn't simply put domestic petroleum products through a refinery. If not, that is a problem.

I think people need to be a little pro-active about this and demand "terror-free oil". If the premise behind it grows, it might overwhelm the propaganda against off-shore/Alaskan drilling. (And then we just need to reallyreally come up with convenient cost-efficient alternatives.)