Why Citgo Needs to Go

Citgo has been owned by PDVSA, the Venezualan State Oil Company since 1990. However, until Hugo Chavez, it was run by Americans. Now Chavez's purge is complete. For a history and explanation of PDVSA, Citgo, and Chavez, the below article by Mac Johnson was excellent (read the whole thing).

I don't think many people know Citgo is owned by Chavez. I have stopped buying gas at Citgo for over a year now. If you feel sorry for the "Moms and Pops" that operate the stores... they always can switch just like 7-11 did back in September.

Among the first Chávez loyalists to be installed was Antonio J. Rivero, who was appointed to Citgo in 1999. Rivero, a graduate of Venezuela’s military academy who had participated in Chávez’s failed 1992 putsch, had no experience in the petroleum industry. And he seemed to have no duties at Citgo, other than reporting upper management’s goings-on “directly” to Hugo Chávez. “He was like the old Soviet commissar. He was here to make sure we were doing things politically correct, and was passing back information to Venezuela,” said Robert Funk, a former Citgo executive.

Other Venezuelan cronies began flooding into the company, and did not stop even when Rivero and fellow Chávez 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 VP for Government and Public Relations, discovered that his computer files regarding the Venezuelan embassy were being tampered with, his home was vandalized and he subsequently resigned. “I got the message,” he said later. “I was afraid for my family.”

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I refer here to Citgo’s Chávez-initiated program to provide subsidized heating oil to states where the congressional delegation is friendly to Chávez. 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 Chávez by showing him to aid America’s poor when American oil companies have not. The fact that the money for this program comes out of the pockets of Venezuelans (per capita GDP: $6,100) in order to help Americans (per capita GDP: $41,800) is somehow omitted from the Robin Hood-themed press releases.

Chávez has also used the program in an attempt to tap into American racial politics. Jesse Jackson and Danny Glover are leading trumpeters of the program, which is targeted especially at African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods and Indian reservations. Chávez draws heavy support in Venezuela from Indian and other minority groups, whom 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.

Finally, Chávez hopes to influence congressional policy and interfere in American elections with the program, which was engineered in concert with Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts and is administered (in part) through Citizens Energy, a non-profit cooperative founded and run by former Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

By doling out Chávez’s stolen oil at a 40 percent discount in liberal Congressional districts, and allowing the incumbent representatives to take credit for it, I believe Chávez 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

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The Citgo sign towers proudly over Kenmore Square in Boston, and Americans – who were concerned to learn that Chávez seeks an alliance with Iran and North Korea, or were incensed when Chávez called our President “the devil” at the U.N. – continue to mindlessly fill up at Citgo, giving Chávez not only profits from Venezuela’s oil (unavoidable), but also profits from retail sales of fuel (easily avoidable).

It has become clear that Chávez’s Citgo is no friend of America. What is less clear is why America is still so friendly toward Citgo. Energy Tribune