By Maria Hickey & Tom Weber, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Drivers in Missouri only have a few more days to fill up their gas tanks at a Citgo gas station. The company is pulling out of Missouri at the end of this month.
The company, which is owned by Venezula's state-owned oil company, announced last summer that it would stop supplying Citgo gas to more than 1,800 stations across the country, including 233 in Missouri. A limited number of stations in Illinois also will be affected. The move is aimed at concentrating operations closer to the company's three refineries in Lemont, Ill., Lake Charles, La., and Corpus Christi, Tex.
The change does not mean those stations will close, however. Citgo spokesman Fernando Garay says the company has worked with those stations to help them transition to new gas suppliers. "This whole process took from July of last year up to now and there's been continuous communications with all of the company clients to take place in the least traumatic way for everybody," he said.
Citgo does not own any stations; it supplies gas to independent owners.