I find this such a ridiculous idea. Two words as to why: Global Market.
Since oil is traded on a global market the idea that you can “show those Arabs something” by not buying their oil simply isn’t going to work unless the boycott is world wide and everybody abides by it. We saw the same thing back when gasoline prices got high here in California. Every now and then I’d get an e-mail about how we were to boycott a given oil/gasoline company. One week nobody is supposed to buy from Shell stations. The next week the station to be avoided would be Exxon, the Chevron, and so forth. Why, soon these greedy companies would realize the error of their ways and bow down to the might of the California consumer. What happened? Nothing.
If you really want to “show those Arabs something” (or the oil companies) then stop using oil. Completely. If you buy oil from a different supplier, then somebody else is going to buy from the Arab. This is why the oil embargoes didn’t really work in preventing oil from reaching the United States and other Western countries. To be sure the price of oil went up, but that was due to cuts in production and it impacted everyone, the United States, Western and Non-Western countries alike.
Do oil revenues go to fund terrorism? I’d be surprised if this were not the case. The problem is that there isn’t an alternative to oil that is anywhere near as efficient. Not using oil is not too different from cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. And the idea that you can buy terror free oil is just a feel good marketing scheme that ultimately will do nothing against terrorism funding.
