As BP pays to clean up the aftermath of April’s oil spill, some local franchises are paying the price for the disaster.
BP reported Friday that it has spent about $8 billion to date in response to the Gulf oil spill, according to The Wall Street Journal. While some Durham BP stores have lost revenue from local buyers boycotting, others remained relatively untouched by the crisis in the gulf.
Over the summer, more than 10,700 people joined a Facebook group calling for a worldwide boycott of BP. Although many BP employees admitted initial concern upon hearing about the oil spill, only some noted a definite decline in business.
Sashi Patel, an employee at the BP in Bragtown, a neighborhood near North Roxboro Street and Old Oxford Road in North Durham, found that the oil spill has not affected business at his location. He added that at the time of the spill, he felt only a limited amount of apprehension.
“There is always some concern when [events like the oil spill] happen,” Patel said. “[We were] not worried to a point of panic.”
Patel said he was satisfied with the way BP has been communicating with local businesses, adding that BP is informing owners of steps taken to “rectify the problem.”
Patel said he had yet to notice a change in customer attitude toward the company. He added that he feels that in general the public understands that the establishment in which he works was not responsible for the spill.
“I think the general public realizes that the accident was not something that [the store keepers] caused. [We’re] just a BP-branded convenience store and we are not to be blamed for it,” Patel said.
Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of marketing and psychology at the Fuqua School of Business, has been following the BP oil spill and pinpointed the motives behind boycotting.
“Basically, if you think about why people would want to boycott BP gas stations, they’re upset about what happened at the Gulf and feel like they’ve lost control,” he said. “By driving past a BP station, it’s an opportunity to feel like you are asserting control over the crazy world we live in.”
Fitzsimons added that boycotting BP “is largely an illusion of control” because the gas distributed from the Gulf comes from the same refinery. Thus, whether one goes to Shell or BP, they are receiving gasoline from the same place. Instead, it is only the local businesses that suffer.
“The people who are getting hurt [by boycotts] are the local owners of these gas stations, who obviously had nothing to do with the disaster in the gulf,” he said.
Fitzsimons said he believes that BP is not experiencing as much of a revenue decline as one would expect, especially because the boycotts do not really affect the corporation at all.
Jack Hamilton, an employee at a BP on Avondale Drive in Old North Durham, has seen different effects than those at Patel’s store. He said in general, the store has not been as busy as it was prior to the spill, which he said he expected.
“When I saw [the spill on the news] I thought, ‘This will probably be bad now,’” he said. “[Business has] definitely been affected, but... how much, I’m not sure.”
Even Fitzsimons said that although he knows boycotting BP gas stations accomplishes little, he still has passed a BP station in favor of another brand in light of the Gulf crisis.
“Even if you know it’s an illusory sense of control, you feel like you are taking an action,” he explained.
As a consumer, sophomore Kelsey Behrens said she too has found herself avoiding BP gas stations, but more because of her displeasure with the company’s response to the spill.
“If they had been open from the start and honest with everyone about their mistake it would have been a better PR move,” she said.
Sophomore Sarah Lancaster, however, continues to frequent BP.
“I didn’t boycott BP because I know the local gas stations are independently owned businesses and it really doesn’t do any financial damage to the corporation.”
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