Gas station owners say protest is hurting small businesses
BP is stuck doing a cleanup of another kind—this time on the streets of New York—after its gas stations were vandalized with brown paint. “It appears they put it inside water balloons and threw them at the sign,” a police source said of the vandalism, which has been going on since May 30 and has hit five other privately-owned BP stations. The vandalism is part of a larger trend of growing resistance against the oil giant. Hundreds of groups on Facebook have been created with anti-BP names, 541 of which are called “Boycott BP.” The National Association of Convenience Stores has implored citizens not to take out their anger on individual station owners who bought a franchise and a contract, arguing they are misdirecting their angry energy at small businessmen instead of BP.