It seems that several talk radio hosts are calling for a boycott of Citgo gas stations.  Just thought I would add my knowledge of production.  Depending on where the oil is pumped out of the ground it will have different quantities of impurities in it that need to be removed.  Things like water, sand or Sulfur, and may be composed of mostly light ends like propane, gasoline or may be mostly tar.  Venezuelan gas for instance is heavy sour crude and a chemical plant must be modified with extra crude stills and Sulfur recovery facilities to remove the tar and sulfur before they can process it and sell it in the US market.  If you try to run sour crude thru a plant designed for sweet crude you will end up gumming (not really) the system and spend more time fixing it than being profitable.  

First you heat up the oil and at a given pressure and temperature heavies settle and lighter ends rise or evaporate.  What is left is “gasoline”.  (Over simplified for brevity).  

When the crude came out of the ground it was owned by Citgo.  Sold to a Royal Dutch Shell terminal.  Loaded on an “X” company tanker and shipped to the port of Houston.  It docks at a terminal on the Houston ship channel and offloaded it into tanks that are owned by Valeo Chemical.  By this point it may have changed hands 3-5 times.  But it get’s better.  say Shell and Citgo can both process the heay crude so depending on who buys it a pipeline pumps it to adjoining plants.  They begin to “strip it down” so they get the gasoline and about 100 different products that range from electric power to coke ( a solid coal like product).  During the process they can buy and sell it and pipe line it to other refineries as easily as you walking across the street.  

So when they are done the gas is pumped back into storage tanks and sold to a company that distributes it.  Semi-tank trucks pick it up at load stations.  As they are filling the tankers they inject fuel additives that make the gas a “specific brand”.  For instance Cheron has “Techron” mixed with it.  


So how do we boycott Citgo when everyone has their fingers in the pie?

You don't.

The oil companies are in cahoots by the nature
of thier game.

It's really just pissing in the wind.

If you want to hurt them, trade in your SUV
on a feul efficient car (hybrid or otherwise).

That's really about the only way....Even then it's just a gesture.

I tend to ignore organized boycotts.

Don't stop at Citgo stations.


That alone would put a severe hurting on them

Quoted: Don't stop at Citgo stations. That alone would put a severe hurting on them

HOW?  you could be buying gas at a Citgo station from any number of companies.
sure you could boycott the privately owned filling stations but your not hurting anyone but the owners.  

Quoted: Don't stop at Citgo stations. That alone would put a severe hurting on them

I quit a while back.

Here's the counter-boycott!

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm

Published on Monday, May 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org  
Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!  
by Jeff Cohen
 
Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.
And tell your friends.

 
Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn't have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.

Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don't have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)


Moonbats

Better yet, buy a Deisel and make your own Bio Deisel. There is a push for it around here along with ethanol.

Quoted: Better yet, buy a Deisel and make your own Bio Deisel. There is a push for it around here along with ethanol.

how are you going to make Bio Deisel or ethanol?
sure i bet you can make some but not for less than $20.00 a gallon.

Boycotting a fuel company by not buying fuel from them is like trying to hurt a certain banks business by not using cash that came through their establishment. Bottom line, if you want to hurt a business, you need to know what product generates the greatest margins for them, and then interrupt that component of their business. The actual retail component of fuel sales (for all I know, I have no idea) may be very low margin yield. Maybe they make most of their money in trading the raw materials on the open market...I dont know. If we assume that Citgo has X number of revenue streams, it makes sense to suppose that some components of X generate more money than others. If in fact retail sales are their high margin product line, then by all means, a boycott could hurt them. If it represents a small fraction of their revenue stream, and we factor in the reality that the number of people boycotting is only a fraction of the people that comprise the consumer market place, one can see that a boycott is absolutely useless.

Oh, since there seems to be some fuel expertise here...help me remember something from my school days....

Minimum Octane rating = (R+M)/2 method

Remind me what this equation represents?
Back in school many many years ago I had to know this for a class and be able to calculate octane ratings.....I saw it at the pump recently and realized I couldnt even remember what the variables were.

I started boycotting Citgo about 3 1/2 years ago.  Why?  Because their diesel sucks.

Quoted: Quoted: Better yet, buy a Deisel and make your own Bio Deisel. There is a push for it around here along with ethanol. how are you going to make Bio Deisel or ethanol? sure i bet you can make some but not for less than $20.00 a gallon.

Biodiesel looks pretty simple to make.  It costs maybe $500 to set-up the equipment, and after that it costs something like 60cents/gal.  Do an internet search for "appleseed" and "biodiesel" and you should find plenty of information.


I use 50% biodiesel, but I don't make it I just go fill up halfway with biodiesel and halfway with #2(which costs about 10cents/gal more than biodiesel here).  I also average about 45mpg.

Quoted: Don't stop at Citgo stations. That alone would put a severe hurting on them

That's what I do. The fact is they don't get my money.

The fact that the Cartel still gets it is, of course, unavoidable.

Quoted: Quoted: Better yet, buy a Deisel and make your own Bio Deisel. There is a push for it around here along with ethanol. how are you going to make Bio Deisel or ethanol? sure i bet you can make some but not for less than $20.00 a gallon.

here is a quick recipe,but there are recipes using used vegtable oil from restraunts.
www.kitchen-biodiesel.com/

and a link to survial forum
www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=123&t=435157

I don't go to Citgo stations, regardless of how minimal an impact that makes.

Even if it's only 1 penny, I'd rather it go to ExxonMobil or ChevronTexaco.

I quit buying from "Chit-Go" about 15 years ago. I was a full-time cop working part-time security for extra dinero at Chitgo HQ in Tulsa when I found out that they were a wholly-owned subsidiary of PDVSA (Venezuelan Petroleum Ministry) and all the money was going to a communist country. They used to be the old "Cities Service Companies" in Tulsa until they got bought out by PDVSA about 30 years ago, IIRC.


I won't buy from Phillips Shitzy-Shitz (66) either because they fire employees if they search the employee's car on the company parking lot and find a gun in it.

Just my humble .02, but nothing you can say will make me change my mind.

Edited to add: Pearl Harbor was bombed by Mitsubishi Zeros burning TEXACO gasoline too.