Petro points will have to wait. I received the following email from a friend, and while Snopes says "not buying gas" won't help the problem because a one to three day boycott of gasoline is too short a period to make a difference, maybe there is enough of a spin on this method that it might work.

Instead of forwarding this to 10 people, I'm posting it on the blog so that the 500 or so people that come here daily (assuming some of you are gas purchasing Canadians) will get the message.

It is rumoured that we are going to hit close to a $1.42 a litre by the winter. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Someone offered this good idea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't-buy-gas" on a certain day campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, this is a plan that can really work. Please read it and join.

We all know that we're being controlled by the oil companies. Does everyone remember how they drove up the prices and got the gas prices to where they wanted them, claiming there was a shortage of oil. Well, there isn't any shortage now, and the oil is more abundant than it was 35 years ago when the price of a gallon of gas was 29 cents!!!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of litre of gas is CHEAP at $0.78 - $0.85, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace... not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea:

PAY ATTENTION HERE

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), PETRO-CANADA & SHELL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of PETRO-CANADA and SHELL buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to at least thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300), and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 30 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you I didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $0.64 OR LESS RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK!!!!!!

But it won't reach 30 million Canadians, there aren't even that many Canadians with Internet access, nor that many that actually buy gas. I guess the point is to just tell as many people as possible.

Update: Well I've decided it won't work. Read about it in the comments.