I hate "chain mail" in general. Most of the stuff sent around is false or misleading anyway. Actually, the misleading ones are the worst because there is a certain logic to them that can snare people.

I was going to begin one of my customarily long-winded posts, but I checked Blast's link and that Snopes webpage basically says what I was going to say. Particularly here in California, there are few refineries producing the California-specific blend of gas, so everyone buys from the same limited pool of refineries.

If gas consumption is a zero-sum game and you're just shifting around where you buy the gas but keep the overall demand at the same level, there's no way you can drive down the price overall. As consumers, the only effective thing we can do is to consistently reduce demand, either by driving less, less often, or driving significantly more fuel efficient cars.

I doubt that any executive level manager would be so naive and ignorant of basic economics to actually come up with such a plan for price reduction.