To BP, or not to BP: Discourse on a modern moral dilemma

Abstract: This post will chronicle a moral dilemma I faced after filling my car at a gas station. I have some questions answered while raising some to myself as I always have.

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Before I begin, I have to confess of my bad habit. I wait for the yellow empty gas indicator to come up on my car to refill and it has caused me trouble in the past. I am not one of those who stick to a single gas station and pump premium only in my cars. I go whichever is closest and cheapest. However, I faced a dilemma after pumping gas in my car a few weeks ago.

It was one of those days when the indicator on my car showed that it was time to refill. I relocated recently to my current location and was not very familiar with the neighborhood. I have been around the streets here and there for groceries, coffee etc. So I was driving along a major road in search of a gas station. I knew there was a BP station on that road. I have seen it on my way to a coffee shop few days ago. My memory served me right this time and I reached the intersection to the left of which was the BP gas station. However, there was also a Sunoco gas station at the corner of the intersection after the traffic signal. The price was same, exactly to the tenth of a penny. I wonder when they will stop pricing to the 9/10^th of a penny though penny itself has become worthless. I went to the Sunoco gas station to fill my car instead of going to the BP gas station.

The moral dilemma started a few hours after filling the gas. There are multiple reasons why humans act the way they do. Most times self interest takes precedence over other reasons like social causes, environment concerns etc. In this case, I went through a considerable hardship at Sunoco for a simple task of filling the tank of my car. I did this to deny BP of my business. This was my way of showing dissent at BP for it’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon Drilling Rig crisis resulting in the biggest oil spill in continental US. The more I think about my actions now, the more I am convinced of my irrational action on that day.

Before I get into the details of my moral dilemma, let me narrate the troubles I went through in my act of trying to avoid BP. I waited for my turn at the traffic light to turn green so I can go to the Sunoco gas station while that would have been completely unnecessary had I gone to the BP station. The BP station was located before the traffic signal and I just had to yield to the opposite traffic, which was sparse, and fill up my car at the completely empty gas stations. There was not a single soul using the gas stations at this BP location. I drove into the Sunoco and waited my turn which had a queue of two cars at each line. It was 15 minutes before my turn would come up. When my turn did come up, I swiped my credit card and it was rejected. Now I had to go inside and speak to the attendant. There was again a line there. I had to wait 10 more minutes before I could speak to the attendant. The attendant took my card for some about $30 and told me I could go pump. The attendant somehow messed up activating the pump and I had to go in again. He had to cancel my previous transaction and charge my card again. After three more attempts due to errors made by the attendant, I was able to fill my car with some gas. I was sure the tank still had about 2 gallon left, but I was frustrated now to redo the whole process. I was now 45 minutes into the process and was getting anxious to get away from there.

Had this been six months ago, I would have been to the gas station and would be out of there in 15 minutes under normal circumstances. I had lost 30 minutes of my life (I say that as a matter of factly and I have been known to waste lot more time that the half hour without guilt) for a cause that I am not sure was right and worth it. I was trying to deny BP of my business, thereby hurt BP in my own humble way for causing the gulf oil spill and not responding in a timely manner. I felt that they denied taking responsibility for a long time, lied about the rate at which the oil was spilling out into the ocean, was trying half baked measures at containing the spill, tried to save money even while facing the worse oil spill disaster the US has known that has effected the livelihood of millions, immeasurable loss to the marine life and unknown damage to the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico. While all my reasons are my own and are debatable to some extent, my thoughts was going counter to my original thinking that lead to my decision of boycotting the BP gas station.

I acted against my selfish interests of going to the closest, cheapest and quickest choice which was BP in my current anecdote. Humans are social beings and we sometimes take actions counter to our selfish interests. I was not the only one boycotting BP on that particular day. It was evident when you look at how the BP gas station lot was empty, while there were people waiting in line at the Sunoco station on the other side of the intersection. This is not just a local phenomenon also. BP gas stations all over USA have seen a fall in their sales fall by about 20% on average. Over 850 thousand people liked the Boycott BP on Facebook.

While fighting for social causes, acting unselfishly may not be right choice after all. Like in trying to hurt BP by boycotting it, I think myself and many more like me are causing little harm to BP. Instead we might be causing much bigger harm to those other faceless people who are in no way related to the disaster. They are only guilty by association and we all fell into that trap. So who is affected by this ‘bigger harm’ and what exactly is this ‘bigger harm’ I am talking about?

The gas station owners and the people employed at the gas stations are the ones affected much more by the BP boycott in this case. As I have mentioned earlier, nationwide BP gas stations have noticed a reduction in sales by about 20%. In a struggling economy that might mean a lot for people who are making a living out of a low margin sales of gasoline. According to smartmoney in 2006, fuel sales made up 71 percent of revenue but only 34 percent of gross margins. With the profit margin just over 2% on a gallon of gas the gas stations owners depend on the sale of the in store items to the customers coming in. The in-store items are high margin items (profit margin over 30%) and bring lot more money than the gas itself. So when the gas sales go down by such big percentage, the number of people buying items in the store also reduces.

Even if we ignore the ‘bigger harm’ by the irrational notion that the gas station owners have to be punished as they are guilt of associating with BP, we have to understand how much of an impact if any ‘Boycott of BP’ has on BP. If the collective impact is big enough, then the boycott can be considered successful from the perspective of those boycotting BP. A naïve look at it might seem to have a big impact as the sales have reduced by 20% at the gas station. Digging deeper, one will be surprised to know that only a fraction of the gas at the BP stations actually originated from a BP crude oil facility or is produced at a BP refinery. The odds are, it is very unlikely and the reason is this. The gas at BP comes from a storage facility where the gas stored could have come from any number of refineries and not just from one producer. To be called BP gas, the gas has to be added BP additives and thats it. The difference between a gas at a BP and a gas at other station like Sunoco is nothing but the brand of additives added. The additives themselves are not any different. Also it is required by law that all gas stations have a certain amount of additives. If BP sees a reduction in demand from its own gas stations, they can sell their crude oil and gasoline from it’s refineries to others in the open market. The corollary is also true. Meaning that gas at a non BP gas station may contain gas from a BP refinery or gas produced by a refinery using the crude oil produced from a BP production facility. Beyond gasoline, there are  other products from BP that are rather invisible. Castrol brand of lubricants is owned by BP. When you get the oil changed in your automobile from a garage, you might not even know that you are using a BP product.  Beyond gas and lubricants, there are several products from crude oil that we use in our daily life that are not  branded. For example, the polythene bags, plastic containers for food and storage, trash bags. These synthetic products are made by non BP brands that might use the feed from crude oil derivative produced by BP. Overall the impact to BP from boycotting BP gas stations is very minimal and depending on the location and time it could be nothing.

Here are some more links to recent news items that will shed more light on this topic.

Chicago Tribute - Bypassing BP stations won't KO oil giant.

NY Times - Punishing BP Is Harder Than Boycotting Stations.

Market Watch - Gas-station owners, not BP, feel sting of boycotts.

Yahoo News - Time to scrap BP brand? Gas-station owners divided.

I decided to revert to my selfish choice: to go to the nearest, cheapest gas station with minimal traffic. But I knew all the above facts well before I made that fateful decision leading up to this rant. So what made me make that irrational decision and what is causing this casual reversal? What if I had a more pleasant experience at the Sunoco on that day? I am sure I would have felt happy for sticking it to the evil multinational in the remotest, humblest, irrationally possible way – by boycotting the evil brand.

I shop at Wal-Mart that has bad reputation for wage and working conditions of its workers. I occasionally eat at McDonalds that is alleged to causing obesity in US, and violating animal welfare. I buy coffee at Starbucks that is criticized for anti-competitive practices. And I own a Tobacco company(do I say more) in my investment portfolio. My irrational action was based on a recent incident; that of an oil spill disaster. And a 45min trouble brought me back to my senses. Or have I?