7-Eleven

7-Eleven dropping Citgo gasoline : Sep 27, 2006 — HOUSTON (Reuters) - 7-Eleven Inc. said on Wednesday the war of words between Venezuela's leftist government and the Bush administration had no part in its decision to drop gasoline supplier Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is owned by Venezuela's state oil company.

The contract expires on September 30, 7-Eleven spokeswoman Margaret Chabris said and the decision was made long before Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called President Bush "the devil" last week.

"People are making it out to be more than it is," Chabris told Reuters.

Amen. But those are not people, those are spin spin spin trolls and liars blaming a long-done deal on Hugo and the devil. Mindless chatter over the backyard fence by iddie biddies.

7-11, a (Japanese owned) retailer will replace Chavez's oil with supplies from several distributors, including Tower Energy Group in Torrance, Calif., Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City and Frontier Oil of Houston. (7andI Holdings also last month bought White Hen Pantry.)

Doesn't Frontier Oil sound like a name the Bush Family Robbingsons would own? Chauffeured cowboys in oiled snakeskin boots.

Citgo/ PdVSA has always had to buy-in third party suppliers for some of the stations under the Citgo sign, as it did not produce enough gasoline/diesel to supply all. Citgo claimed a business loss on this practice for the last 20 years. The Citgo/7-Eleven contract was up and Citgo has went on to bigger and better, and more profitable deals.

HOUSTON (Aug. 16, 2006) – Lyondell Chemical Company today announced that it has acquired CITGO's 41.25 percent ownership interest in Lyondell-Citgo Refining LP (LCR) in a transaction valued at approximately $2.1 billion, including CITGO's portion of the refinery's debt. Concurrently, Lyondell has negotiated a new five-year, 230,000-barrel-per-day crude oil contract with a subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) for the refinery. The new contract is based on market prices, which in recent years have been lower than those under the previous crude supply agreement.

Lyondell refining and marketing PdVSA's heavy crude, minus 7-11s among other less profitables which PdVSA has recently done away with (2 smaller refineries) = good business. Venezuela reaping an oily windfall as Chavez plans to build refineries at home, pipelines, buy tankers, etc. And doing so in such a confident manner that one might believe the price of oil at $50+ a barrel is here to stay (in case anyone thought otherwise).