HOUSTON -- Even as the CITGO communications team shifted into high gear this week to smooth over the public-relations wrinkles caused by Hugo Chavez's September visit to the United States, reports of more CITGO retailers choosing to debrand continue to clutter the media.
Houston-based CITGO began running ads on Monday in major newspapers. Topped with the headline, CITGO Sets the Record Straight, the ads include a frank, factual open letter from president and CEO Felix Rodriguez. At the same time, retailers from North Carolina to Illinois are heralding their change from CITGO gasoline to other brands as at least partially in reaction to the Venezuelan president's diatribe against U.S. President George W. Bush before the United Nations.
The CITGO ads, as reported previously in CSP Daily News, showcase all facets of the CITGO story, according to the company, including:
Heritage. CITGO has a rich heritage as an enduring American success story for close to 100 years. Refining might. CITGO is a refining powerhouse, providing energy needed to fuel our nation's economy. Ample and accessible supplyWith access to the largest crude reserves in the Western Hemisphere, CITGO receives supply from the wellhead in Venezuela in days as opposed to weeks. American jobs. The American community of 4,000 CITGO employees and 100,000 workers employed by the company's retail network of independent entrepreneurs benefit the local, state and national economies. Giving. Largely through the efforts of CITGO's marketers and retailers, the Venezuela-owned company is the top corporate contributor to MDA having donated close to $83 million over the past 21years. Warmth for the poor. CITGO plans to distribute 100 million gallons of heating oil at a 40% discount to an estimated 1.2 million impoverished Americans this winter.
A CITGO story TV commercial also will run in all regional media buys, according to the company.
For some retailers, however, the media blitz is too little, too late. In the Kankakee area of Illinois, T.D. Pete's stations are dropping the CITGO brand, according to a report in The Daily Journal.
T.D. Pete's operates six outlets, four of which are being converted to sell Shell gas, co-owner Perry Denault told the newspaper. Two sites will continue selling CITGO gas, he added. Denault declined to say whether Chavez's comment had anything to do with the decision.
Another company that has dropped its affiliation with CITGO is Rockford, Ill.-based Road Ranger and its 47 stores in five states, according to the newspaper. Road Ranger made its decision to abandon CITGO on July 31, and Chavez's U.N. speech was Sept. 20.
Rob Harmon, Road Ranger's general manager of merchandising and food-service operations, said though the decision to change petroleum already had been made, Chavez's comments prompted the company to make the switch as quickly as possible.
Petro Express Inc. is phasing out CITGO Petroleum Corp. gasoline. By next year, the company will no longer sell the brand, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer. CITGO, the refining arm of Venezuelan national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), has become the subject of a growing boycott in the United States since Venezuelan leader Chavez referred to the president as "the devil" last month in a United Nations speech.
Petro Express hasn't cited global politics as the reason for the change, but the brand is disappearing from 45 of its 66 locations this year, according to the report. The company joins convenience store giant 7-Eleven, which dropped CITGO at its 2,100 locations, again making the decision prior to Chavez's speech.
Petro Express announced last week an ongoing remodeling of its locations and called the changes "renewed emphasis on the Petro Express brand."
"We have chosen to market the Petro Express fuel brand in lieu of any national brand," the company said in a written statement. The statement did not mention CITGO.
Regardless, angry consumers are reading into the changes what they'd like. James Cox, a customer at a Petro Express station in Charlotte, N.C., told the Charlotte Observer that until recently, he had not thought much about the lineage of individual brands of gasoline. But he was happy he wasn't buying a CITGO product on this day. "I hate [Chavez], he said, but usually for gas, where I buy is for the convenience.
Like thousands of Americans, Cox has heard and read about campaigns to boycott CITGO gas stations. But CITGO dealer Maximo Alvarez told the Miami Herald the only people who would be hurt by such a boycott are the CITGO retailers themselves. They are punishing the wrong people, said Alvarez, who owns and operates 55 stations in southern Florida. CITGO does not own one single station in the United States.
Calls for a CITGO dealer boycott go back as far as January. But the buzz has escalated in recent weeks, after Ch avez called Bush the devil.
Similarly, Jorge R. Pi aon, former president of Amoco Latin America and now at the University of Miami, told the newspaper the impact of Venezuelan oil stretches across the entire energy market. It is extremely difficult for a U.S. consumer to avoid the use of Venezuelan crude oil or Venezuelan refined products,'' said Pi aon. Most of the jet fuel that we use here in South Florida at the airports is sourced out of Venezuela.
Although Alvarez said the boycott's impact on his business is small, he has taken to the air waves and other outlets recently to send out the message that a CITGO boycott is punishing the franchisee owners and not Venezuela or Ch avez. Alvarez, who was part of the Pedro Pan airlift of children from Cuba and is no fan of Ch avez, said Americans must make up their own minds. We are in a free market, and people have their choice.
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