Originally Posted By: engineer20
i heard costco depends on the bidder and it varies by location but the pump adversises that it's 5x the federal minimum regardless of where it's getting the gas from but that it's cocono phillips oil.
Just as clarification, Costco doesn't make any blanket claims as to where they obtain their fuel. They claim that they buy their fuel directly from major refiners as well as distributors (likely futures or spot market). Even so, the way that fuel deliveries go is really convoluted. There's almost going to be no guarantees that the seller of the fuel has to be the refiner. They have contracts, and if it costs less to meet those contracts with fuel produced by another refiner, neither side really cares. They could also buy from a specific refiner, but the delivery happens elsewhere (via exchange mechanisms) with commodity fuel that can't be identified by refiner.
Costco itself claims to use its own proprietary additive that's added when the tanker truck delivers fuel at the gas station. They likely have fuel from the depot without detergent additive. Even if they're buying from a known refiner, it's not going to contain that company's proprietary additives.
Quote:
http://www.costco.com/gasoline-q-and-a.html
Q: Where does Costco get its gasoline?
A: Costco buys fuel from major refineries and distributors in each area. All Kirkland Signature™ Gasoline is fully guaranteed, just like the merchandise we sell inside the warehouse.
Originally Posted By: dave1251
76 is blended by conocophillips. 76 was Chevron many moons ago.
ConocoPhillips is gone as a refiner. They spun off all the "downstream" businesses (refining and marketing) as Phillips 66. ConocoPhillips is now mostly an oil exploration company.
76 was also never quite part of Chevron. It was originally Union Oil of California. They used to market as Union 76 and UNOCAL 76 before UNOCAL sold off much of its oil exploration and refining operations to Tosco. Tosco merged with Phillips, then Phillips merged with Conoco. Then the combined company spun off into Phillips 66 (mentioned earlier). Chevron did essentially buy out UNOCAL, but that was after they had sold their retail marketing operations using the 76 brand name. Apparently UNOCAL did use the 76 name up to the point where they were bought out by Chevron, but not for any retail stuff like gas stations or refining. I remember at the time, UNOCAL was primarily a natural gas exploration company, and the sale of the company to the Chinese oil company CNOOC was controversial and then withdrawn under questions of national security.
