Some of those working behind station counters have been worrying about consumer reaction, said the report, but owners interviewed by AP across the country say [image-nocss] it has been business as usual since the April 20 explosion on an oil rig off Louisiana began leaking 200,000 gallons of crude a day.
"I haven't noticed anything yet," Jeff Dolch, a BP station owner in Baltimore, told the news agency. "But if [the spill] hits hard and the news starts showing pictures of animals, at that point it may start to happen."
That may be why motorists still seem more interested in price and convenience than in a boycott: So far, oil has not impacted the Gulf coast in the dramatic way Alaskan shores were fouled in 1989 when the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons.
"This concept, whether it will end up to be of significant size or not, is now being formed in consumers' minds," Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Camarillo, Calif.-based petroleum marketing monitorLundberg Survey, told AP.
With images of dead or dirtied birds, fish, seals and otters, the Exxon Valdez disaster triggered protest rallies, and consumers returned some 10,000 of Exxon's 7 million credit cards to the company. But it still took 40 days for outrage to coalesce into a one-day national boycott of Exxon stations, said the report.
"The boycott concept at that time took a while to kick in and was fanned passionately by some radio folks including regular deejays around the country," Lundberg said.
The boycott itself was controversial because only a small percentage of stations selling the Exxon brand were owned by the company. Independent operators argued they were also victims of the spill.
"It did not catch fire and become a nationwide attack on Exxon sales," Lundberg added. "It was to a degree hurtful for some retailers and a little bit hurtful for all, but it was more hurtful in the psyche of the business from 'explorationists' down to the franchisees. They truly seemed to be in mourning."
Exxon said at the time that it had no reports of a loss of volume of gasoline sales due to either the boycott or the campaign against its credit card.
A BP boycott potentially could have a big impact based on its share of the U.S. gasoline market, second only to Shell, AP speculated. But customers in some states may not be aware they are buying BP gasoline. The BP name has a low profile in the West, where the company sells gasoline under the ARCO brand well known for low prices and cash- or debit-only transactions. That has put ARCO neck-and-neck with Chevron at just over 20% of the huge California market, Lundberg said.
Even BP's "Helios House," the shiny steel Los Angeles gas station made from recycled materials and equipped with eco-friendly systems, operates as ARCO, the report said. The parent company's green-and-yellow sunburst "helios" logo and the phrase "A part of BP" are in small letters at the bottom of ARCO signs.
On Monday, it sold regular gasoline for $3.06 a gallon, the same as the Exxon station across the street. Other stations within a few minutes drive had prices as low as $3.01 and as high as $3.25.
BP spokesperson David Nicholas said the company hasn't told gas stations to cut prices. He said he does not know if BP-branded stations had done so on their own. "But I'd find that highly surprising," he told AP.
In interviews across the nation, BP customers were often pragmatic and some owners expressed surprise that customers had not mentioned the Gulf accident, the news agency said.
"It's really bad, but they're taking responsibility," a motorist said as he filled his tank Monday at a downtown Chicago BP station. "Accidents do happen."
Another motorist filling up in Erlanger, Ky., said the spill is "absolutely horrible" but will not affect where he buys fuel. "I go where it's the least expensive, even if it's only two pennies cheaper," he said.
"I am worried about the spill, and I think they should have done more to prevent it and find a way to fix it faster," said a Crescent Springs, Ky., motorist. "If I didn't have to go for the cheapest price, I might not have come back to BP."
A motorist filling up in South Philadelphia told AP that he believes big oil companies all operate in the same way. "It doesn't make sense to boycott one company because this spill could have happened with any of the other ones," he said.
At the same station, another motorist doubted the effectiveness of a consumer action. "It's a negative way to think, but there'd never be a boycott big enough for it to make any impact," she told AP. "People need gas, they'll go to wherever is cheap or convenient, not burn more gas by driving around looking for another place to go."
Pavin Chittiwuttinon, a 7-Eleven franchisee who sells BP-branded gasoline in a south Baltimore neighborhood, said he expected to catch some flak from customers about the spill, but has not so far. "That surprises me, with the demographic we're inmore educated, more well-off people," he told AP. "It hasn't been brought up at all."
Meanwhile, environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, have not mentioned any plans to boycott BP, reported WRBL-TV, although it said a California man has created a Boycott BP page on Facebook that has more than 1,100 members.
Three prominent environmental groups in New Jersey, however, did say that they will call for a nationwide boycott of BP stations until the company fixes the oil rig disaster, according to an NBC report.
"It outraged me so much as a parent and as somebody that cares about life on the Planet Earth," Robert Spiegel of the Edison Wetlands Association told NBC in explaining why he decided to lead the boycott. Also joining in will be the NY/NJ Baykeeper group, which is part of the nationwide Riverkeeper organization, as well as the Sandy Hook-based Clean Ocean Action.
"We're very sorry if that were the case," BP spokesperson Toby Odone told the news outlet. "It's clear from our side we're doing everything we can to clean this up as fast as possible."
But it is not fast enough for the New Jersey environmental groups, said the report. "We want to send out a message loud and clear that echoes across the entire country--when people think of BP we want them to think of 'Boycott Polluters,'" said Spiegel, standing next to a BP gas station in Edison.
But Odone noted "people make their own choice on how they react to this. Thousands of people are offering their support to help usthat's very encouraging," he added.
Spiegel said this boycott will continue "until they clean up and stop the pollution and restore that area."
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