CITGO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the national oil company of Venezuela,
so naturally most of its crude oil comes from there. However, in February 2002
CITGO also imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following quantities:
Iraq: 1,342,000 barrels
Kuwait: 437,000 barrels
Conoco imports primarily from Mexico, Venezuela, and Canada, and not from
Middle Eastern countries. However, they are planning to merge with Phillips,
which does import from Middle Eastern countries (see below).
BP imports from a variety of oil-producing countries, but in February 2002 BP
North America also imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following
quantities:
Iraq: 470,000 barrels
Kuwait: 415,000 barrels
Saudi Arabia: 2,123,000 barrels
Algeria: 3,853,000 barrels
Phillips also imports from a variety of oil-producing countries, but in
February 2002 Phillips imported from Middle Eastern countries in the following
quantities:
Iraq: 717,000 barrels
Saudi Arabia: 1,100,000 barrels
Sinclair imports from Canada, not the Middle East.
Sunoco imports primarily from Canada, Angola, and Nigeria, not Middle Eastern
countries.
So, "doing the math" and multiplying these monthly figures by $30/barrel and
projecting them over the course of a year, supporting only the companies listed
above would still be putting $3.76 billion dollars per year in the coffers of
Middle Eastern
countries.
Statistics aside, the glaring fallacy here is the suggestion that we could
possibly buy our gasoline only from these selected companies. This notion is
like claiming that we could put the big grocery chains out of business if we all
bought our food only from small mom & pop stores, but ignoring the fact that
these small shops couldn't possibly come close to supplying all our grocery
needs. The oil companies named above are relatively small (which is a large part
of the reason why they don't necessarily import from the Middle East) and could
not satisfy the demand that would be created if a significant portion of the
USA's consumer base were to shun all the largest oil companies, unless they
bought up the output of the companies we were supposed to be avoiding in the
first place (or, alternatively, unless they raised their prices sky-high).
Moreover, the idea that oil companies sell gasoline only through their branded
service stations, and therefore if you don't buy gasoline from Shell-branded gas
stations you're not sending money to Shell (or, by extension, the Middle East),
is wrong. Oil companies sell their output through a variety of outlets other
than their branded stations; as well, by the time crude oil gets from the ground
into our gasoline tanks, there's no practical way for consumers to know exactly
where it came from. (A good deal of the crude oil purchased from Russia, for
example, is oil from Iraqi fields sold through Russian middlemen.)
As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted:
Economics Prof. Pat Welch of St. Louis University says any boycott of "bad guy"
gasoline in favor of "good guy" brands would have some unintended (and unhappy)
results.
Although foreign relations wax and wane, Welch says, the law of supply and
demand is set in stone. "To meet the sudden demand," he says, "the good guys
would have to buy gasoline wholesale from the bad guys, who are suddenly stuck
with unwanted gasoline."
So motorists would end up buying Arab oil anyway — and paying more for it,
because they'd be buying it at fewer stations.
And yes, oil companies do buy and sell from one another. Mike Right of AAA
Missouri says, "If a company has a station that can be served more economically
by a competitor's refinery, they'll do it."
Right adds, "In some cases, gasoline retailers have no refinery at all. Some
convenience-store chains sell a lot of gasoline — and buy it all from somebody
else's refinery."
St. Louis University's Welch says, "The e-mail presupposes that you know who the
supplier is, and that's not always the case."
Finally, what this scheme proposes is merely a symbolic solution rather than a
practical one, because even if the USA stopped importing oil from the Middle
East, other countries will still purchase it. (Japan alone, for example,
generally buys as much or more oil from countries such as Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait than the USA does.)
Complex problems rarely lend themselves to simple, painless answers. Simply
shifting where we buy gasoline isn't nearly as good a solution as the much
tougher choice of sharply curtailing the amount of gasoline we buy.