Should You Boycott BP? The Media Says "No"!

According to “Proud to Buy BP,” a strange Tumblr that supports the “bravery” of folks filling up their cars at BP pumps, today’s Miami Herald claims that BP franchises have “no closer relationship to the crude oil company than” they do “to Coca-Cola.” (Which means… the franchises… buy BP’s product and resell it, just like Cokes, we’re pretty sure!) So, you protesters and boycotters? You’re just destroying one franchisee’s American dream, not actually hurting BP, according to the media. BP gas stations just buy their gas from “a distributor,” and then only pay “some money” back to BP. All over the country, the media is explaining this! Okay so, sarcasm aside… over the last couple years, BP closed down all its company-owned stations, laying off nearly 12,000 people in 2009 alone across the organization in total. Their annual report phrased this as “the transfer of our US convenience retail sites to a franchise model.” So all of the 11,000 or so BP stations in the U.S. are essentially franchises now-and they actually do represent a not-at-all-huge part of the company’s income. But things get tricky when you let CNN explain this to you, in the very small words they like to use.

Their story goes like this:

Moreover, BP doesn’t solely provide gasoline to its franchises.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, purchasing gasoline from a given company does not mean the gasoline was produced by that particular company’s refineries.

After oil companies such as BP extract crude oil from the ground, it is sent to the company’s refineries to be refined into gasoline. The gasoline is then sent through shared pipelines or shipped in batches to storage terminals.

Anyone who wants to retail gasoline, such as grocery chains, can purchase this gasoline from BP’s terminals as “unbranded” gasoline. It only becomes “branded” when BP injects its own additives into the gasoline, which is then sold to retailers

So it doesn’t solely provide the gasoline, and then, oh, wait, their branded gasoline is actually “sold to retailers.” Boy is that not helpful.

Also franchisees pay a 5 to 6 % royalty fee to BP during their 20-year contracts.

In the end, what do you do? I dunno? But, no matter what the real-world math is, I could no sooner bring myself to buy gas from a BP pump these days than I could fill up my car from crude floating up the beach.