Fact Check: Email about Citgo not totally accurate

Times-Union readers want to know:

An email says that Citgo gas station signs have disappeared in the past seven or eight months because they are going to be changed to Petro Express to avoid a boycott. Citgo has been losing sales, the email says, because it is owned by the Venezuelan government headed by President Hugo Chavez, who pushes a socialist revolution and is closely allied with Cuba. Chavez wants to bring down the U.S. and he is using our gas money to do it, the email states. Is this all true?

Some parts of the email are true, some aren't.

Chavez has been a bombastic figure for a long time, even before Snopes.com started seeing this email and others like it in 2006. He has been outspoken against the United States; one of his most dramatic speeches was at the United Nations in September 2006 when he called President George W. Bush "the devil" and suggested that the U.N. should move to some place like Jerusalem.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called him a danger to Latin America. He responded by saying, "Don't mess with me, girl!"

Because of these diatribes, many U.S. motorists have called for a boycott of Citgo, which is owned by Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. PDVSA is the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Citgo website states.

Started in America

Citgo actually was founded as an American company in 1910 and was owned for a time by Southland Corp., which sold Citgo gas at its 7-Eleven convenience stores. That stopped in 2006, when 7-Eleven decided to start selling its own brand of gasoline, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The viral email requests a boycott of Citgo stations and also Petro Express, which it says is also "100 percent owned by Chavez."

It is not true that Petro Express is owned by Chavez or Venezuela, the fact-finding organizations Truthorfiction.com and Snopes.com report. Petro Express was an American-owned convenience store chain headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., before it was bought in 2007 by Pantry Inc., the Kangaroo convenience store chain with headquarters in Sanford, N.C. Many of the Petro stations now bear a Kangaroo name.

Before the Pantry Inc. acquisition, Petro Express stores sold Citgo gasoline, but after the sale, the new owner switched to Chevron's Texaco brand. Pantry's 2010 annual report, however, shows that Citgo is still one of its fuel suppliers with a contract through 2013, Snopes.com reports.

Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S. The 759,000 barrels per day (yes, per day) are combined and processed with other crude, making it almost impossible to determine the exact origins for the gasoline at the pumps. So a boycott most likely would not affect Citgo sales, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

In addition, Snopes.com points out, even though Citgo is owned by Petroleos de Venezuela, the company is based in Houston and employs 4,000 people.

Citgo, by the way, has 34 stations within 50 miles of Jacksonville, according to the locator at Citgo.com.

carole.fader@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4635