Just Say NO to Arab O

e-mail from a friend | 04/19/02 | e-mailer to evad

[evad]

Where to buy gasoline and not support terrorism, actually is food for thought.

Yisrael Medad of the Begin Center sent the following information. Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies who don't import their oil from the Saudis.

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from.
Major companies that import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00- 8/31/01).
Shell 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco 144,332,000 barrels
Exxon/Mobil 130,082,000 barrels
Marathon 117,740,000barrels
Amoco 62,231,000 barrels

If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION!
Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:

Citgo 0 barrels Sunoco 0 barrels Conoco 0 Sinclair 0 BP/Phillips 0

All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and can be easily documented. Refineries located in the U.S. are required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing. They report on a monthly basis.

[evad]

Inquiring minds need to know..is this true or BS? If it's true I'd love to do my part in "Just say NO to Arab O"

[Dakmar]

Total BS. Check with snopes.com before posting rumors recieved in e-mails, it will save you a lot of flaming.

[krb]

False.

[evad]

snopes.com..you know, I bookmarked that before and forgot to use it.

Thanks!!

[evad]

thanks krb..I'll do better next time.

[rhombus]

It's hard to believe the fiugres about CITGO... every CITGO owner I see is middle eastern. I think there's so much buying and selling going on that like automobiles nowadays you just don't know where the parts come from.

A national campaign of some sort would indeed be helpful. I think Americans would pay higher prices if they thought it was really doing some good. However, every time the price of gas goes up the DemonRats start ranting about "Gouging" and we start investigating the oil companies... and sure, we can always catch somebody taking advantage... meanwhile the Arabs chuckle, step up production and the price drops to the point where domestic production is too costly (in many ways) and we are all happy cause it costs less to fill up those mini-vans and SUVs.

And of course now there is no drilling in Alaska -- how nice that people like (running for President) John Kerry have solidified their environmental base with slogans and the environmental dream that technology will suddenly bring us magic energy for free, free, free.

[evad]

A national campaign of some sort would indeed be helpful. I think Americans would pay higher prices if they thought it was really doing some good.

agreed..I know I would.
I guess that's why I jumped at this letter I received to find out if it was real or fake. I forgot about snopes.com.
I'd love to find some way to hit these fat a$$ shieks in their pocketbooks. But like you say, the RATs would find a way to disrupt it.

[Chemist_Geek]

Snopes is heavily biased to the left. Check this thread. I wouldn't rely totally upon them for fact-checking.

[RippleFire]

I can't testify where the gasoline they sell came from, but CITGO itself is owned by the Venezuelan national oil company. Presumably at least a good portion of their petroleum products come from Venezuela.

[Paradox]

Snopes is heavily biased to the left.

I had agreed with this charge before, but after reading their entire website, I found many articles that had a "right" lean to them. Overall, I'd say they lean left, but other than that hillary story, they are pretty even handed and their information is good. I am also a fan of www.urbanlegends.com, and older and perhaps more democratic website. It is an extension of the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, where various sources are used to verify these stories. Snopes and UL.com agree on pretty much all the stories veracity.

[azhenfud]

Arab oil = Blackmail, or sort of Dark Brown....<br<Az

[evad]

Snopes is heavily biased to the left. Check this thread. I wouldn't rely totally upon them for fact-checking.

Good point Geek...I notice that the basis for the falsity of the claim at snopes is more that it just wouldn't work than a real strong case as to which companies deal in Mid East oil and which companies do NOT.

The statement about the political naivete that mid east equals terrorist doesn't prove or disprove anything to me..it's almost like a red herring to throw one "off the scent".

The statistics that show only 15% of the oil coming from the mid east again doesn't prove anything to me regarding which companies deal in Arab O and which do not.

A final statement that if consumers stopped buying from Shell, Exxon, et al that it just wouldn't work tends to actually support the proposition that these ARE in fact the companies that deal with Arab O and those that do not. Whether some kind of boycott would work or not is a totally different issue.

Oh well...who knows??

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Unfortunately this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Usually the emailed version of this quotes radio consumer-advocate Clark Howard as a source for some of these figures, but Howard disavows this (http://clarkhoward.com/topics/gas_hoax.html). And, if the Saudi purchases-by-company are readily available, a source URL should be provided, IMHO. I have not been able to find the customer-list referenced in the email, but here's one problem: "in May 2001, Saudi Arabia selected companies to participate in the huge ($25 billion) 'Saudi Gas Initiative,' the first major reopening of Saudi Arabia's upstream hydrocarbons sector to foreign investment since nationalization in the 1970s... Companies selected for the three 'core ventures' under the Gas Initiative are: 1) South Ghawar: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Phillips; 2) Red Sea: Exxon plus Marathon and Occidental; 3) Shaybah: Shell, TotalFinaElf, and Conoco." ...But, per the email, BP/Phillips and Conoco don't "import" from Saudi. Wrong.

All in all, the email is hopelessly simplistic and rife with errors and usually contains at least one wholesale misattribution.

It's the week of April 15th-- the day more of our income is confiscated than feudal serfs suffered. Outrage should be pointed squarely at record, obscene levels of state and Federal taxation. The average American pays more for taxes than for food, shelter, clothing, entertainment and transportation combined. And I would wager that more money comes out of your pocketbook, to the Feds and then to enemies of our country of one stripe or another, than to enemies via your gas dollar.

We don't need this diversion.

[gridlock]

I do my own thinking. I will not let Snopes.com tell me what makes or does not make sense politically. If I can but Saudi oil from one station or buy non-Saudi oil from the station across the street, why would I not cross the street? Because my action might not have an effect on terrorism? Maybe it will, or maybe it won't, but as for me, I will try to keep my money out of Arab pockets.

[mushroom]

Oil like cash is fungible and hard to trace. A tanker unloads into a tank farm on the coast. The oil may be traded for oil at another site, delivered to meet futures sales, or mixed and matched in a dozen other ways. Eventually the oil is delivered by pipeline to various refineries which sell the finished products to both company owned and independent retailers. By the time it hits the pump, its almost impossible to tell where the oil came from.

You only have to read the reports of oil company shenanigans during the oil embargo of the seventies to see how esoteric these transactions can get.

[TxBec]

ya know.. everytime I hear an "urban legend" everyone runs to Snopes and finds out it was false. Up until about a year or two ago, I never even know who "Snopes" was.. they are the authority because...?

[gridlock]

I don't really care where the oil in my gas tank comes from. I care where my money goes to after it leaves my hands. If a company buys oil from the Saudis, my money will go to the Saudis if I buy their gasoline. If a company buys oil from the North Sea, my money will go to Britain (or Norway, and I'm not too thrilled about that!). If a trading company mixes and matches the oil in between to fill an order, that does not effect where my money goes, because the money for the resource goes to the country that pumped it. The fact that another batch was substituted later does not change that.

[evad]

I never even know who "Snopes" was.. they are the authority because...?

That really gets down to the main point regarding truth or falsity doesn't it? Kinda like "who's checking the checkers"

[TxBec]

exactly.

[Paradox]

I also check with alt.folklore.urban and thier website www.urbanlegends.com. They are independant individuals who do their own fact checking. Also, most of those sight give their sources, so you can double check for yourself.