Panic has set in at Venezuela’s state oil company with the spectacular exit of 7-Eleven from the Citgo gasoline-station label. The PR damage is so bad that the entire brand may be a total loss. Indy gas station after indy gas station are yanking ties to the Venezuelan dictator-controlled oil company. This follows 7-Eleven’s verbally spectacular pullout, a U.S. consumer boycott, as well as Citgo’s own of pulling of the Citgo label from about 1800 stations that the Venezuelan energy company could no longer supply due to crumbling productive capacity. Which is a shame, because it was a good company and it had a superior product. Chavez threw it all away. He never knew the corporate – or any other – meaning of the word ‘goodwill.’

The implications of that for his ability to cling power may well be affected. After all, if he can’t sell his gas, his keister is grass. And that, if it happens, may be good news for Venezuela’s democrats.

But the Venezuelan state oil company’s minions are in high-damage control mode, and putting out whole strings of face-saving lies to make it look like the 7-Eleven pullout was all their own idea. That’s baloney. Miguel Octavio at Devil’s Excrement has blown the lid off of that, lie by lie.

Go see the whole blogger takedown in the tradition of Little Green Footballs on the Potemkin Village of Chavista oil lies being put out, in this great post here.