VENEZUELA - The US Operations.

USA is PdV M&M's main market, usually accounting for 60% of the country's oil exports. Until President Ch vez was elected in December 1998, as he had warned he may sell all or part of the overseas holdings, PdV M&M used to aggressively widen and consolidate its presence in the US market

PdV M&M already had a strong position in the US market, with five fully-owned refineries and four joint ventures. Two of the JVs are linked to upstream partnerships in Venezuela with Conoco and Phillips (now part of ConocoPhillips) and Mobil (now part of ExxonMobil).

Citgo Petroleum Corp., based in Tulsa, Oklahoma., is a 100% owned operating arm of PdV America and is an integrated refiner, transporter and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals, refined waxes, asphalt and other industrial products.

Citgo has a fully owned oil refining capacity of 752,000 b/d, over 13,500 retail outlets covering the whole of the US, and stakes in 518,000 b/d of refining ventures. It is the third biggest downstream entity in the US next to ExxonMobil and the Shell.

Citgo purchases a major part of Venezuela's crude oil exports. It has been supplied with Venezuelan crudes by a separate PDVSA subsidiary, Commercit, which from early 1998 became part of PdV M&M.

Of Citgo's fully-owned refineries - are located at Lake Charles (Louisiana), Corpus Christi (Texas), Paulsboro (New Jersey), Savannah (Georgia), and Lemont (Illinois) - the Lemont plant was the latest to become fully-owned by Citgo, under a $250mydeal with Unocal in late 1996 to take over Unoven, a 50-50 partnership formed in February 1989.

Citgo's refineries have deep-conversion units. It has two asphalt refining units at the Paulsboro (New Jersey) and Savannah (Georgia) refineries and one lubricants plant at its Lake Charges refinery called Cit-Con.

With its famous logo spread from coast to coast and in the other parts of the US through its 13,500-plus locations in 48 states, Citgo markets several different octane grades of gasoline, complete with its proprietary "high performance" detergent additive, "to satisfy the needs of a wide range of vehicles and operating conditions". These include the 110 octane racing fuel.