Citgo Petroleum Corporation (or Citgo) is a United States-incorporated, Venezuela-owned refiner and marketer of gasoline, lubricants, petrochemicals, and other petroleum products.
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 and Cities Service brands were sold by Occidental to Southland Corporation, original owners of the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores; 50% was sold to Petróleos de Venezuela in 1986, and the remainder in 1990.
Citgo has supplied 14,000 retailers, but in July 2006 announced plans to cease serving 14% of their independent retailers in the United States.
As of 2004, the company is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with over 4,000 employees and annual revenue in excess of $32 billion. Before relocating 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.)
