7-11 stores ends relationship with Citgo by bluepastry Blog entry

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by bluepastry

7-11 stores ends relationship with Citgo

Customers will begin seeing the gasoline canopy signs change

Date: 9/28/2006 12:54:17 PM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 1582 times

7-Eleven, Inc. has had a 20-year supply agreement with CITGO Petroleum Corporation, a U.S.-based company, which ends (after 20 years) this week. 7-Eleven is now making the switch to its own branded gasoline. Distributors for the gasoline, which 7-Eleven® stores begin selling in October, are U.S. companies, such as Tower Energy Group in Torrance, Calif., Sinclair Oil of Salt Lake City and Frontier Oil Corporation of Houston.

Customers will begin seeing the gasoline canopy signs change – with the CITGO logo coming down from the gas canopies and off the gasoline dispensers, and the 7-Eleven brand going up -- at our more than 2,100 company-operated and franchised gasoline convenience-retail locations. While the most of the signs will be changed by the end of next year, this is a large undertaking, and not all CITGO signs will be off our gas canopies until 2008.

Regardless of politics, we can sympathize with many Americans’ concern over derogatory comments about our country and its leadership recently made by Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez. However, our decision to sell 7-Eleven branded gasoline has been in the works since last year because we knew our contract with Citgo would be ending at midnight on Sept. 30, and CITGO announced it would no longer provide gasoline in Texas, where we have hundreds of stores.

Although CITGO is owned by Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., it is a former U.S.-owned company, still headquartered in Houston, Texas, and is the fifth largest marketer of gasoline in the U.S. The U.S. CITGO operation employs 4,000 people, and supplies 14,000 independent U.S. retailers with gasoline and other petroleum products. Americans with no substantive connection to Venezuela would be economically harmed by boycotts.

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A proud tradition was born on May 1, 1916, when Harry Sinclair formed Sinclair Oil from the assets of eleven small petroleum companies. Sinclair quickly grew to become the seventh largest oil company in the United States. The original Sinclair Oil Company began marketing the apatosaurus (brontosaurus) in 1930 and now after more than 70 years, "Dino" still remains one of the most recognizable corporate logos in the world.

Sinclair is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is the nucleus of a corporation that includes Snowbasin Resort in Ogden, Utah (site of the 2002 Downhill Courses), as well as Sun Valley Resort in Idaho. One of the most prominent properties of Sinclair is Little America, a beautiful hotel, travel center and restaurant located on I-80 in western Wyoming. The Little America name has also been given to other properties, one of which is one of the most luxurious hotels in Salt Lake City. The company recently opened Salt Lake City's first 775 room luxury hotel, The Grand America. Sinclair Oil owns and operates three refineries, two in Wyoming and one in Oklahoma. Marketing fuel in 21 states and supplying fuel to over 2,600 company and distributor operated stations makes the Sinclair brand a prominent and welcome sight to the motoring public.