what a rediculous idea.
"we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers." <--- stupid statement
only two things influence price...supply and demand. Prices are going up again becaue supply is going down (or the speculation that it will, but more to that at the end,) and demand is going up because of the normal summer increase in driving. Also, refining capacity hasnt fully recovered from the hurricanes yet.
This will backfire more because the price at the smaller gas stations will go up because demand at their pumps is going up. This will inevitably drive people back to the others.
Not to mention the fact that the smaller stations could not keep up the supply to service all the drivers, which will eventually overrun the supply, even if people wanted to spend more money for it.
Also, there are only a few major crude suppliers and refineries, so these "smaller" ones are probably linked with the larger companies anyway.
The main reason gas is high all of a sudden is speculation. People are artifically inflating the price of gas through speculation of a shortage. There is no real shortage yet. I read an article that said that, if speculation wasnt a factor right now, oil would be $35 a barrel. I dont know if thats true though. People are just paying out the nose for it because they think it will be in short supply, and they want more of it for themselves.
So..you want to reduce gas prices for-real?
1. tell your parents to stop driving their bigass gas sucking behemoth SUV to the mall and get something realistic
2. stop driving up and down Barrett endlessley for no reason, reving your little vtec or listening to the BOV
or 3.. just drive less in general.
all of these reduce demand and will reduce prices.