Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums Showcase and Stories, Petroliana COTM Jan 07 Cities Service

This month I will be giving you the history on the Cities Service Oil Co. This is my first time doing one so I hope I do ok. If you have any pics of cans,stations,pumps & globes feel free to send them to me & I can post them. Well here I go & I hope you enjoy.

[This message has been edited by gasoildude (edited 01-04-2007).]

I think you are using the thumb nail option.


[This message has been edited by Jarvis (edited 01-03-2007).]

DSP curb sign

15" complete globe

db

The story of CITGO Petroleum Corporation as an enduring American success story began back in 1910 when pioneer oilman, Henry L. Dougherty, created the Cities Service Company.

When Cities Service determined that it needed to change its marketing brand, it introduced the name CITGO in 1965, retaining the first syllable of its long-standing name and ending with "GO" to imply power, energy and progressiveness. The now familiar and enduring CITGO "trimark" logo was born.

Occidental Petroleum bought Cities Service in 1982, and CITGO was incorporated as a wholly owned refining, marketing and transportation subsidiary in the spring of the following year. Then, in August, 1983, CITGO was sold to The Southland Corporation to provide an assured supply of gasoline to Southland's 7-Eleven convenience store chain.

In September, 1986, Southland sold a 50 percent interest in CITGO to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. PDVSA acquired the remaining half of CITGO in January, 1990. With a secure and ample supply of crude oil, CITGO quickly became a major force in the energy arena. CITGO was officially born in the spring of 1983, but the company traces its heritage back to the early 1900s and a pioneer oilman named Henry L. Dougherty.



[This message has been edited by gasoildude (edited 01-03-2007).]

A CITGO pole thermometer from Kansas City,Kansas

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frank jordan

CITIES SERVICE CLASSIC JACKSON, MICHIGAN
BOTTOM PICTURE TAKEN DEC. 1997
TOP PICTURE SOME TIME LATER.
THE STATION HAS SINCE BEEN PAINTED !!!!

[This message has been edited by Dave Rowlison (edited 01-04-2007).]

Some brief history of the company. The Cities Service Company in the early 1900s, was recognized for its hard work and successful projects. In 1931, the company completed the country's first long-distance, high-pressure natural gas transportation system. The famous "Big Inch" project was a 24-inch pipeline that stretched 1,000 miles from Amarillo, Texas, to Chicago.

Henry Latham Doherty (1870-1939) was the founder of the Cities Service Company.
1901- C, (ITIO) a predecessor to Cities Service, is formed
1904- Oil produced from the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company Lease reaches four million barrels
1910- Henry L. Doherty creates Cities Service Company to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities
1912- Cities Service first enters oil and natural gas business in the Mid-Continent Field with the purchase of the Quapaw Gas Company
1912- Doherty and the Cities Service Company buy the extensive oil and gas holdings of the Barnsdall Properties
1913- Cities Service buys the Empire Gas Company.
1914- The Empire subsidiary of Cities Service discovers and develops the Augusta and Eldorado fields in Kansas.
1915- Headquartered at 60 Wall Street in New York, Cities Service had 98 subsidiaries.
1916- Cities Service purchases its first refineries in Okmulgee, OK, Cushing, OK and Gainesville, TX.
1916- Henry L. Doherty, with fund-raising help from Josef Pulitzer, installs nighttime lighting for the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
1916- Cities Service acquires the Crew Levick Company and its refinery on Petty's Island in the Delaware River. To this day CITGO still operates a terminal on Petty's Island.
1917- Cities Service subsidiary Empire Gas & Fuel increases its fuel production from 3,000,000 barrels in 1915 to 36,000,000 in 1917.
1918- Cities Service subsidiaries produce half the oil used by the Allies in the final year of the war.
1919- Cities Service has seven refineries as of November 28.
1919- Henry L. Doherty uses motion pictures to convince business people to invest in Cities Service-the first such use of movies.
1925- Cities Service begins drilling in the rich Seminole Field in Oklahoma using new tools and oil recovery techniques.
1927- All the Cities Service subsidiaries combined had, or were drilling, 176 wells and producing 160,000 barrels per day.
1927- Cities Service consolidates all the gas producing and transportation activities of the Empire Company into the Cities Service Gas Company.
1927- Cities Services introduces the high octane "Koolmotor" gasoline along with its companion "Koolmore" motor oil.
1928- Cities Service discovers the famous Oklahoma City Pool, one of the largest and most productive oil fields of the time.
1928- Cities Service merges with Arkansas Natural Gas and its subsidiaries, Ark Fuel and Louisiana Oil Refining.
1929- Future President of Cities Service W. Alton Jones buys $50 million worth of utilities.
1930- The Oklahoma City Field produces 36.4 million barrels of oil, 4th largest of American fields.
1930- Cities Service buys a bulk lubricants plant and warehouse in Chicago.
1931- Cities Service becomes a billion dollar corporation with 25,000 employees.
1935- W. Alton Jones, as Senior Vice President of Cities Service testifies against the Wheeler-Rayburn Bill (Public Utilities Act of 1935 which would break up the utility companies).
1936- Cities Service marketing moves from Chicago to Tulsa.
1936- At the close of the year Cities Service was comprised of 24 petroleum companies, 45 electric companies and 15 natural gas companies.
1937- Henry L. Doherty recognized with the Anthony Lucas Medal for "Distinguished Achievement for Improving the Technique of Finding and Producing Oil."
1940- W. Alton Jones becomes President of Cities Service.
1940- Cities Service begins stripping itself of 166 utility subsidiaries in compliance with the Public Utilities Holding Act of 1935.
1940- The now famous sign is erected in Kenmore Square in Boston. The sign, which was replaced with the CITGO logo after its creation in 1965, has become a landmark, familiar to Boston Marathon participants and Boston Red Sox fans.
1940- Cities Service buys the remaining shares of the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company.
1942- Construction begins on the Cities Service Refinery at Lake Charles, LA, at an estimated cost of $72 million.
1942- SS Cities Service Empire, an oil tanker owned by Cities Service, is sunk by a German U-boat off the Florida coast.
1943- Cities Service completes construction of "the Big Inch"-the biggest, longest pipeline ever-to help supply petroleum products to the war effort.
1944- Lake Charles Refinery goes into full operation-the world's largest high octane aviation gasoline refinery.
1944- Cities Service refineries process 53 million barrels of crude oil to fuel the war effort.
1945- By the end of World War II, Cities Service fleet of oil tankers had delivered 32 million barrels of oil to military forces around the globe.
1946- Cities Services partners with other oil companies to form joint exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico.
1949- The Cit-Con Lubricants and Wax Refinery, a joint venture between Cities Service and Conoco is built. It is 65 percent owned and operated by Cities Service.
1951- A crude topping unit at Lake Charles Refinery has a record run of 875 consecutive days and "B" Cat establishes a record 1,058-day run.
1952- Cities Service begins exploration in the Middle East in Muscat and Oman.
1953- Cities Service joint venture discovers oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
1954- Cities Service acquires exclusive rights to operate service stations on the New Jersey Turnpike.
1957- Cities Service begins aggressive credit card marketing and makes first delivery of jet fuel to the U.S. Air Force.
1958- Cities Service begins building "super" service stations-each averaging about 800,000 gallons of gasoline a year.
1959- Cities Service subsidiary Arkansas Fuel operates 1,159 oil wells and in Louisiana drills its deepest well-15,120 feet.
1959- J. Ed Warren named President of Cities Service.
CITCO is still strong today.

This is one of the trash cans in my shop.

Here are some pictures I have photographed in collections or at shows etc............





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Scott Shipers
WANTED: Quart Picture Cans
Kansas City, Missouri

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Scott Shipers
WANTED: Quart Picture Cans
Kansas City, Missouri

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Scott Shipers
WANTED: Quart Picture Cans
Kansas City, Missouri

Here are some globes sent to me buy Aaron Hop. Very nice globes Aaron Thanks for sharing.

The first two are some nice one piece clover shaped globes.

Next are four Hull bodied globes. There are a few more of these out there in a different version please share them if you have them.



The next seven are three piece globes.

Here are some signs from Cities Service. Thank you Bob for sharing these.




A cool clover Koolmotor sign.

Some more signs.
The earlyer signs from Cities Service where done in black.

O. K. gang I think I am getting better at posting pictures, we will see what happens. Here are a couple of pics. of some Cities Service items.If this goes, I will try to do a few more later in the week. I have mostly small items and a few cans in C/S. things.Norm Huff.

I will tr y again, Norm.

O. K. back to square one, thanks for your patience, i will try later. Norm

I am going to try this one more time, please humor me if it dont work. Norm.

Here are some quarts from Cities Service.




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Scott Shipers
WANTED: Quart Picture Cans
Kansas City, Missouri

Here's one I picked up recently as part of the collection I acquired.

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Chuck

Signs Wanted: Sunset, Clipper, Habor, Indian, Powerlube, Beacon, Sinclar Aircraft

Great stuff so far, guys! Scott, you have some really good Cities Service quarts. Your red Aero Oil is still the only one I have ever seen. Here are most of the Cities Service quarts I have, there are still a few more at my dad's that I will try to get pictures of later in the week. I apologize for the glare from the flash on some of the cans.

Aaron

Group Shot:





[This message has been edited by olddutchgas (edited 01-07-2007).]

Here are some close up group shots.

Here is the green version of the Aero Oil quart. I had this one for a couple of years, but sold it when I bought my house this spring. It's still one of my favorite quarts out there.



[This message has been edited by olddutchgas (edited 01-07-2007).]

If you look closely at a lot of the the Cities Service quarts out there they have small differences. My early blue Anti-Freeze w/ the glacier has the "Cities Service" in the clover logo. I believe Scott's has the "Cities Service Once-Always" in the clover logo. Sorry for the flash on this one.



Another group of cans with a number of versions is the fairly common gold Cities Service 5D. There are actually three versions I know of: the Multi-Range in the small rectangle, the SAE 5W-20, and a 10W-30 version that I do not have. The 5D version shown on the edge of this photo with the burst is quite uncommon.

Post deleted because it showed up twice.

[This message has been edited by olddutchgas (edited 01-07-2007).]

Aaron, You are correct about my blue glacier having the "Once Always" logo. Have never seen the blue Trojan can before. Here is one from my brothers collection.


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Scott Shipers
WANTED: Quart Picture Cans
Kansas City, Missouri

Aaron, I was standing behind you at Iowa Gas when you bought the blue glacier can waiting for you to set it down, you didn't. LOL


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Scott Shipers
WANTED: Quart Picture Cans
Kansas City, Missouri

Scott, I looked for that blue glacier can for a long time the chances of me setting it down were not very high. lol. I have seen that red Anti-Freeze can of your brother's in pictures, but have never seen one for sale. My blue Cities Service Trojan quart is the only one I have ever seen and I actually bought it at a local flea market about 10 years ago, I believe I paid a whopping $18 for it. I haven't regretted that purchase at all, lol.

Thanks alot for sharing Scott & Aaron very nice quart cans. Here are a few pics of some old Cities Service stations.

1930's



1940's


1942

Here are a few pump plates.




A little different than the first one.

Nice job on COTM Dude-of-Gas/Oil, and cool stuff from others, thanks to all.

Here is a pump from the Simpler Times Museum:


And I think a truck sign? from an auction.


And a Cool-Kool-Motor sign from an auction.



[This message has been edited by tokheim (edited 01-14-2007).]

Here are a few more globes.

Couple items from my collection.Tin oil rack sign, 24" porc. sign.

just these...

some great signs in there! I really like that trojan one and the one with the trucks!

CITIES SERVICE 5 & 10 GALLON CANS SETTING ON A BED OF MICHIGAN DEW.
THE JOBBER / DISTRIBUTOR I GOT THESE FROM HAD 2 DOZEN OF THESE INCLUDING A COUPLE OF 6 GALLON CANS THAT SOLD AT AUCTION

[This message has been edited by Dave Rowlison (edited 01-20-2007).]

Here is a picture of a nice ashtray, and what i thought was a toothpick holder. However, I have a 1963 cities service, " Dealer Help" catalog which calls it a cigarette urn.

How would you Cities service Collectors like to have this Wayne Pump in your collection?


[This message has been edited by Tim Rohr (edited 01-24-2007).]

OLD COMMERCIAL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgHY4QQ9umk&NR

~DOC

Does someone know how this oiler fits in timewise with other round C.S. oiles? Thanks.

Anybody need to can some 'maters?


Kill the flies while you're at it

I ran out of gas one day.....

And there was a sign at the Cities Service station...

Some dirty old cans...


And some more dirty ol' cans

another grubby old sign...


Some pretty cans...

some dirty cans..


More dirty cans..

I ran out of gas, so I grabbed this can...


The sign at the Cities Service station drew me in..

So I went home to can some 'maters and beans


Had to spray for flies while I was canning..

Sorry for the double posts guys

Few Cities 5 quart cans and a hanging window neon





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Wanted 5 quart cans

Sorry guys have been dealing with some kids with the flu & then got it myself. So back to the post.



Another enduring icon made its entrance in 1965. On May 16th that year, a new gasoline brand called CITGO was announced with no small amount of fanfare by then parent company, Cities Service Company. The airwaves were full of the new "Zoom! Zoom! Cities Service is CITGO Now" campaign and point of purchase at the newly re-branded gas stations everywhere proclaimed that CITGO was "A Nice Place to Visit." Forty years later, our brand message is virtually the same as we work every day to help you get where you want to go for the road ahead.

Citgo Petroleum Corporation or Citgo, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company, is a United States-incorporated firm refiner and marketer of gasoline, lubricants, petrochemicals and other petroleum products. PDVSA is controlled by the Venezuelan government. The Citgo gasoline brand was inaugurated in 1965 by the Cities Service Company, a United States based energy company that first rose to prominence in the early 1900s. Cities Service Company was acquired by Occidental Petroleum Corporation in 1982. That same year, Cities Service Company transferred all of the assets of its Refining, Marketing and Transportation division (which comprised its refining and retail petroleum business) into the newly formed Citgo Petroleum Corporation subsidiary, to ease the divestiture of the division. In 1983, Citgo and the Citgo brand was sold by Occidental to Southland Corporation, owners of the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores; 50% was sold to Petróleos de Venezuela in 1986, and the remainder in 1990. As of 2004, it is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with over 4,000 employees and annual revenue in excess of $32 billion. Citgo has supplied 14,000 retailers, but in July 2006 announced plans to cease serving 14% of their independent retailers in the United States. Before relocating its headquarters to Houston, Citgo was headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Cities Service Company continued on under various Occidental names as a part of OXY's domestic exploration and production business, but all Cities Service trademarks are now owned by Citgo.

What was once a respected “American” corporation, which happened to be owned by and partnered with the National Oil Co. of Venezuela, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), is now the American directorate of Chavez’s anti-American revolution.
Formerly, following the takeover of Citgo by PDVSA in 1990, the top positions at Citgo were all unofficially reserved for American executives, so that Citgo could function in the American business landscape as a competent and independent enterprise, removed from the politics of Venezuela. This was a natural extension of the domestic policies of PDVSA, which despite being owned by the Venezuelan government since the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry in 1976, had functioned admirably and independently, according to relatively sound business principles. PDVSA was once one of the most respected companies in the petroleum industry.

All this began to change in 1999, when Hugo Chavez came to power as the self-declared leader of the “revolution” in Venezuela. Despite his dreams of conquering grandeur, however, there was no revolution. Chavez came to power through an election, and took office swearing to uphold the ideals and institutions of democratic Venezuela. This was quite a rehabilitation for the radical Col. Chavez who, in 1992, led a failed putsch against the elected government of Venezuela—a government he was sworn to protect as an officer in Venezuela’s military.

In the name of reconciliation, Chavez was pardoned after just two years in prison (despite his coup attempt having claimed 18 lives) and he immediately entered legitimate politics preying upon the economic fears of Venezuela’s poor—so successfully that he was soon elected to the office he had previously failed to seize. Stop me if you’ve heard a similar story before.

Once in office, Chavez set about reengineering Venezuela so that he could never be gotten out of office. The jewel of Venezuela’s economy and the heart of its anti-Chavez middle and upper classes was PDVSA, which Chavez had long railed against as an obstacle to his dream of a Castro-style national revolution. Chavez began, gingerly at first, to replace the upper management of PDVSA with his personal political hacks and cronies. In addition, military personnel believed loyal to Chavez were given security and management posts.

When this failed to silence and co-opt PDVSA fast enough, Chavez precipitated a crisis by appointing as head of PDVSA Gaston Parra, a Marxist college professor whose entire knowledge of the petroleum industry consisted of a belief that it was somehow evil. The reaction to this move was a strike by outraged PDVSA personnel, which shut down Venezuela’s petroleum-centered economy and set off a wave of pent-up distrust and hatred against Chavez. The strike was joined by millions outside PDVSA. Street protests coalesced and 700,000 Venezuelans marched through Caracas—the largest demonstration in the country’s history.

On April 11, 2002, Chavez’s volunteer revolutionary thugs opened fire on the crowd, killing 17. When he ordered the military to do likewise, they refused the order and Chavez was briefly removed from power. Following two days of internal struggle within the military, Chavez’s forces re-emerged in control, and a newly empowered Chavez began a swift and debilitating purge of PDVSA, forcing out 20,000 employees and replacing them with his “Bolivarian” henchmen. At the conclusion of the purge, PDVSA was crippled, corrupt, incompetent, and firmly in the control of President Hugo Chavez, revolutionary leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The leader then turned his attention to PDVSA’s wholly owned indirect subsidiary in the United States, PDV America—parent company of Citgo Petroleum Corp. Chavez would more subtly repeat the pattern employed with such success against PDVSA: appoint a few corrupt and loyal incompetents to high positions and watch with glee as the honest and legitimate were driven past the breaking point and replaced.

As detailed in a New York Times article in 2005, among the first of the Chavez loyalists to be installed was Antonio J. Rivero, appointed to Citgo in 1999. Rivero, a graduate of Venezuela’s military academy and a participant in Chavez’s failed 1992 putsch, had no experience in the petroleum industry and seemed to have no duties at Citgo, other than reporting goings on among upper management “directly” to Hugo Chavez. “He was like the old Soviet commissar,” Robert Funk, former Citgo VP for Planning was quoted as saying in the Times article. “He was here to make sure we were doing things politically correct, and was passing back information to Venezuela.”

Mr. Rivero was seen as an intimidating figure at Citgo and one witness reported him having a gun in his office, causing Rivero to be bodily removed from the headquarters at one point. No gun was found by security. Immediately following Chavez’s removal from power in the 2002 Caracas massacre, company officials swiftly removed Rivero from Citgo. When Chavez returned to power two days later, Rivero likewise returned to Citgo, being elevated to the No. 2 spot in 2003.

A flood into the company of other Venezuelan cronies began, which did not stop when Rivero and fellow Chavez sycophant Luis Marin, the CEO, were eventually forced to resign for corruption. Indeed, by that point, the takeover was fairly complete, with all power controlled by the Chavistas through puppet committees and a “culture of intimidation.” When Jim McCarthy, the vice president for government and public relations, discovered that files on his computer regarding the Venezuelan embassy were being tampered with, his home was vandalized and he resigned. “I got the message,” he told the Times. Adding, “I was afraid for my family.”

McCarthy’s resignation was part of trend. Geoff Reid, assistant treasurer of Citgo, quit because it had “become tough to track” where the company’s cash was actually flowing and he was afraid of his personal liability. Chief Financial Officer Eddie Humphrey resigned for similar reasons.

Today, the American leadership is gone, replaced by Chavez agents who have moved the company, at a cost of $69 million, from Tulsa to an extravagant new headquarters in Houston—a headquarters perhaps unique in the industry, since it includes a bulletproof citadel near the offices of the top executives. Rivero described it merely as “a crisis room to protect top management.” Perhaps Rivero’s personal past has given him a too literal interpretation of what American corporate leaders mean when they refer to a “hostile takeover.”

Given Chavez’s declared aim of destroying America’s power in the world, it seems relevant to assess just how total is Chavez’s takeover of Citgo. To address this, and developments since the 2005 Times article, I contacted Gustavo Coronel, a founding member of the board of directors of PDVSA, a former temporary member of the Harvard faculty, and once an elected representative in the House of Deputies of the Venezuelan state of Carabobo. He now resides in the United States, where he writes prolifically about the Chavista captivity of his nation.

“Up to a few years ago, say 2002, Citgo had a mixed U.S.-Venezuelan board and top level managers were mostly U.S. citizens,” Coronel explained. “Now this is no longer the case. All (possibly with one or two exceptions) of [the] top managers of Citgo and all members of the board are Venezuelan and are there because they are unconditional supporters of Hugo Chavez,” he stated. As an example of the lack of real qualifications that the Chavista managers possess, Coronel added that Felix Rodriguez, who became president of Citgo following Luis Marin resignation over the 2005 corruption scandal, “speaks a Tarzan-like English”—yet he is somehow the head of a major “American” corporation.

“It is not a matter of political infiltration,” Coronel continued, “but a matter of total political control. This is an issue of the highest importance for U.S. national security.” He concluded, emphatically, “I repeat: all board members of Citgo are Chavez supporters.”

Professor Michael J. Economides, editor of Energy Tribune and one of the best known names in the international petroleum industry, concurred with Coronel’s assessment, commenting, “He has replaced all competent people throughout PDVSA. He is bad news for his country.” When I asked specifically if Chavez did the same at PDV America and Citgo, Economides responded simply, “Of course he did.”

And that would seem to be bad news for our country. Indeed, all one needs as proof of the total takeover of Citgo by a foreign dictator is its actions in recent years. While the economy of Venezuela is in shambles and oil prices are near record highs, Citgo has devoted a huge portion of its profits and resources not to improving the lives of Venezuelans, who are the effective “shareholders” of this government-owned business, but instead to propagandizing for Chavez and buying influence for him among the American public, media and, sadly, several willing members of Congress.

I refer here to Citgo’s Chavez-initiated program to provide subsidized home heating oil to States where the congressional delegation is friendly to Chavez. This program, which is named (in rather Tarzan-like English), “From the Venezuelan Hearts to the U.S. Hearths,” has several apparent political aims.

One is to buy good publicity for the class warrior Chavez by showing him to aid America’s poor when American oil companies have not. The fact that the money for his program is coming out of the pockets of Venezuelans (per capita GDP $6,100) in order to pad the pockets of whiney Americans (per capita GDP $41,800) is somehow left out of the Robin Hood themed press releases.

Chavez has also used the program in an attempt to tap into racial politics in America as a source of support. Jesse Jackson and Danny Glover are leading trumpeters of the program, which is targeted especially at African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods and Indian reservations. Chavez draws heavy support in Venezuela from Indian and other minority groups, which he has declared historical victims under his benevolent protection. To further his dream of an anti-American world revolution, he seemingly hopes to exploit America’s race issues so as to philosophically co-opt a portion of the divided population.

Lastly, Chavez hopes (in my opinion) to directly influence congressional policy and interfere in American elections with the program, which was engineered in concert with Rep. Bill Delahunt (D.-Mass.) and is administered (in part) through Citizens Energy, a non-profit co-operative founded and run by former Massachusetts Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II.

By doling out Chavez’s stolen oil at a 40% discount in liberal congressional districts and allowing the incumbent representatives to take credit for it, I believe Chavez seeks to alter the makeup of Congress and indebt Delahunt and other compromised congressmen to him. He has, essentially, turned pork-barrel politics into oil barrel politics and is buying votes for his sympathizers with a new brand of imported pork. SUV drivers are not the only ones with a costly addiction to foreign oil. Certain congressmen, having gotten the first hit for free, are now paying a price for the “free” oil with which they have bribed their constituencies.

The 15-page publicity brochure Citgo distributes to promote the program is illuminating, describing how, in a time “of catastrophic events within some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in the United States … President Chavez offered help from Venezuela and Citgo.” It then goes on to quote the gratitude of Chavez’s charity recipients.

Rose King of Mattapan, Mass., who lives on a “limited income” (unlike Chavez, but like nearly every other human) states, “I didn’t really think about Citgo or Venezuela before, but I am so appreciative that they cared enough about people like me.”

While Carmen Garcia of the Bronx was included for this nugget regarding Chavez and her “community”: “It’s nice to see Latin American leaders extending themselves and taking care of their own. We’re not forgotten. We’re not ghosts in someone else’s eyes.” You know, the way she’s a pale brown ghost for President Bush and the gringos.

Terry Spence, speaker of Delaware’s House, groveled, “We’re grateful to Citgo and President Chavez for what they are doing to help.” And that’s the idea, Terry. Good boy.

The brochure ends with a touching tale of how select heating oil recipients and community leaders were transported, all expenses paid, to “personally thank President Hugo Chavez, Citgo’s parent company PDVSA and the Venezuelan people for their generosity.”

Having been granted an audience with Lord Chavez at the “Presidential Palace,” the group of supplicants “was delighted to hear directly from President Chavez that, as a response to the letter they had written to him asking for the program to continue, it was going to be expanded to help more U.S. families heat their homes during the next winter.”

The group of warm and well-trained terriers was then treated to a tour of working class neighborhoods, a Chavez-supported footwear factory, a health care clinic, and “dozens of cooperatives that provide work” to Chavez’s indigenous terriers.

Keep in mind that this was not a press release from Chavez’s propaganda ministry, but a public-relations pamphlet from the allegedly independent Citgo Petroleum Corp. The only thing missing was a photo-op in which the delegation could have been filmed aiming anti-aircraft cannons skyward at imperialist planes.

Today, Citgo is—quite simply—an unregistered agent of a foreign government, propagandizing for and subsidizing the Chavez regime in its neo-Marxist crusade against America’s alleged empire. Yet it is still treated as any other American business. The Citgo sign towers proudly over Kenmore Square in Boston and millions of Americans who were concerned to learn that Chavez seeks an alliance with Iran and North Korea, or who were incensed when Chavez called our President “the devil” at the United Nations last week, continue to mindlessly fill up at Citgo, giving Chavez not only profits from Venezuela’s oil (which is unavoidable) but profits from the retail sales of gasoline and diesel fuel (which is easily avoidable).

It has become clear that Chavez’s Citgo is no friend of America, what is less clear is just why America is still so friendly toward Citgo. CRO

Well that is all I have. It has been fun & a big thank you to everyone who added to the post. Feel free to keep posting & adding things.

THANKS, BRAD FOR THE AWESOME HISTORY AND EYE CANDY FILLED COTM. I WAS ONLY 5 YEARS OLD WHEN THEY CHANGED TO "CITGO", SO I DON'T REALLY RECALL SEEING CITIES SERVICE STATIONS. I DO HOWEVER, REMEMBER GOING TO THE LOCAL CITGO STATION EVERY SUNDAY AFTER SUNDAY SCHOOL TO GET A PLASTIC MODEL CAR DURING A PROMOTION THEY HAD FOR A WHILE. THAT SAME STATION IS NOW A SUBWAY SANDWICH SHOP! STILL A "GAS" STATION OF ANOTHER KIND! LOL!

THANKS ALSO TO EVERYONE ELSE MAKING THIS COTM WHAT IS WAS...UNIQUE AND VISUALLY PLEASING!

~DOC

[This message has been edited by THE AMERICAN GARAGE (edited 02-01-2007).]

I don't buy gas at Citgo, not that it will do any good but I feel better about it. Unfortunately we'll probably be dealing with this nutcase in the future.