A one-day boycott of gasoline stations by US consumers was doomed to failure but could signal the first stirrings of a grassroots movement angered by soaring pump prices, analysts say.
Millions of Americans were urged to give gas stations a wide berth on Tuesday in an Internet campaign which activists claimed would put a US$2.3 billion hole in earnings of gasoline retailers.
The boycott was called in response to soaring gas prices, which have surged to record levels in the past week averaging more than US$0.78 a liter.
Organizers of Tuesday's boycott claimed that a similar protest in April 1997 caused a US$0.30 drop in retail prices in one day.
That figure has been contested by industry experts but even though Tuesday's boycott was viewed as little more than a symbolic gesture, analysts say anger at gas prices is widespread -- and growing.
"It is definitely hurting people hard and we have seen a clear increase in the numbers of people complaining about pricing," said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.
"But I don't think the boycott is going to be effective at all," Slocum added. "Logically it doesn't make any sense whatsoever."
Protesting drivers would simply shift their gasoline consumption from one day to another and would not be hurting sales, Slocum said.
"This is armchair activism," he said. "What would be far more effective is if folks spent their day calling up their senator or Congress person and demanded they do something about record oil company profits.
"If you want to make the oil industry nervous, don't threaten them with something you can't threaten them with. What makes more sense is to do something about the record profits the industry is earning," he said.
Tom Kloza, chief analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, compared the gasoline boycott to an overweight person threatening to give up fast food for a day in his online industry blog.
"The prospect of Americans giving up one day's worth of gasoline purchases strikes me as the equivalent of a morbidly obese angry man sacrificing his Wednesday afternoon `Biggie Fries' as a means of sending the fast food industry an ultimatum," Kloza said. "It's just plain silly."
Kloza said boycotting service stations ended up hurting small businesses rather than big oil.
"The vast majority of service stations are no longer owned by refiners or integrated oil companies, and quite a few represent the life savings of families in developing countries," Kloza said.
"Those `new Americans' saved up their rupees, dinars, yuans and pesos in order to buy a small business in the US and give the American Dream a try," he said. "Any boycott against these folks is ill-conceived, and merely punishes the messenger for the message."
George Vredeveld, director of the University of Cincinnati's Economics Center for Education and Research, agreed.
"I don't think it's effective in reducing the price of gasoline," he said. "But it might be effective in getting people to think about the issues.
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