Trump Suddenly Opens Dozens of Gas Stations Selling Suspiciously Cheap Fuel, and Experts Are Already Warning of Impending Disaster
“When losses happen, somebody’s got to pay for it.”
Called Freedom Fuel Network, the enterprise encompasses dozens of gas stations throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, USA Today reported, although it isn’t exactly clear which locations are open for business. Plastered in American flag decals and “Freedom Fuel” branding, the gas stations seem to be selling unleaded gasoline for the fixed-price of $3.47 per gallon, about 32 cents cheaper than the current average price in the US.
According to GasBuddy, nearby prices range from $3.85 to as much as $4.49 — no doubt reflecting the slower drip of oil from the president’s costly war on Iran, which burst back into active fighting this week.
As head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy Patrick De Haan told the Philadelphia Inquirer, the current price of crude oil means there’s no way Freedom Fuel’s $3.47 price point can turn a profit.
“Stations selling at this price, it’s not sustainable,” De Haan explained. “Generally, when losses happen, somebody’s got to pay for it.”
De Haan raises an obvious question: who is paying for it? If the stations are losing money on every gallon, somebody has to make up the difference somewhere — whether out of Trump’s pocket, that of a friendly donor, or the taxpayer’s. And if it’s a private company taking the hit, how long until they stop subsidizing Pennsylvania drivers?
Already, the stunt seems to be distorting local markets. As of Wednesday, a nearby Sam’s Club in Dresher dropped its price to match the $3.47 figure — surely good news for anybody buying gas in South Eastern Pennsylvania, but as always, the devil is in the details.
https://futurism.com/future-society/trump-shady-gas-station-unsustainable-business-gasolineOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
185 replies
Come join the anticommunist Republican party. They've got:
Edit adding a 4th
All my libertarian friends hate it, but somehow keep voting for it.
What else would they do?
Vote for a democrat?
I’m hoping they keep their asses at home…
I suppose they must not live in a state with a modern voting system. Staying at home shouldn't proclude anyone from voting, but here we are.
Well yeah, but "staying home" is a colloquialism for not voting. I don't think that meant that mail in voting is bad.
I knew what they meant obviously, and I didn't think they were saying mail in voting was bad, but I will admit it took me a half second to remember that some states still require in-person voting.
This is also coming from someone who learned that going to the polls wasn't a historical thing when I was like 22, when polls being closed made national news or I saw a article about how racist/classist in-person voting was or something. I always just thought America had moved on from that a long time ago, as I grew up in Washington, and I didn't know a time when my parents had to vote in person. One of the many things keeping me attached to this state I suppose.
If only their purity testing was as strong as the left's
If they want less authoritarianism, yes!
Or better yet, somebody who calls themselves "socialist" or "progressive," because at least they tend to be decent on civil rights, if not necessarily stuff like economic policy. It's ridiculous, but Bernie Sanders is one of the most actually-libertarian people in Congress.
If some of the "progressives" could give up on some of their overly-bureaucratic ideas with excessive means-testing (like welfare instead of UBI, "affordable" [i.e. "subsidized"] housing instead of zoning reform to reduce costs, etc.) they'd be perfect actual-libertarian candidates.
I mean, what choice do they even have? They have to vote R.
No they don't. Lots of (D)s, and even the occasional (I) like Bernie Sanders, are less authoritarian than pretty much every single (R) is these days.
Libertarians are just conservatives + weed - religion. They claim to not be cons but still vote 100% in that direction
Libertarians are just insanely stupid people who wish to appear intelligent. Because they think those views make them seem intelligent, lol
A number of the ones in my acquaintance circles are just being propagandized.
The first 10 or so talking points speak well to prepper adjacent and it kinda feels like it wouldn't be that hard for things to fall over. Then they start the fiscal republican tract, so their businesses can make as much money as possible.
By the time they get down to the nuts and bolts of what a true free economy would look like, they check out with we'd figure that out real quick instead of figuring out that it's just another pyramid scheme putting their own people in absolute power stealing every last cent of money that goes to keeping up roads and anything having to do with food provisioning and safety.
Yeah my assessment is too simplistic. First, the person is looking to find a way to codify their self-serving desires (ie. the business owner like you mention). Then they decide it needs to sound smarter than it is. BOOM: libertarianism is the perfect fit. Or at least that's always been my impression. When they try to explain their views, they seem really focused on how much sense they make and how logically consistent they are being. Inconvenient facts are never acknowledged though, of course.
Libertarians are just the ideological opposite but intellectual equivalent of tankies.
100% agree
Libertarianism is not a real ideology. Its just three raccoons in a trench coat. Anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms.
Yes, because supporting the GOP means they get to use slurs again. Thats what really matters.
Also: do they really hate it, tho?
The ones I talk to do.
They're still your friends?
Oh yeah thats a good one
It's owned by Trump not the state. Closer to authoritarian dictatorship than communism.
Where's the fuel coming from though? I wouldn't be surprised to find that it's from Venezuela and he's literally stealing it via the US government to sell himself.
They're the same picture. (The former, that is.)
Silly person, that’s not what communist means. It means “anything/anyone we don’t like.”
It’s more of an amorphous ideal than a concrete set of “rules”.
Close, communism is anything they think they can't profit from.
Any time you step out of the classroom political labels become meaningless.
"Capitalist" America built a giant interstate highway network that seized millions of acres of private land.
"Communist" China has a few score billionaires.
And don't get me started on the National Socialist Party and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
and it will be as shit as if it were run by commies
get it now?
@cannedtuna Let me get this straight...
City-run grocery stores selling at-cost: Communist Bread Lines
Gas stations with government-controlled gas prices: Freedom Fuel Network
He's draining our reserves. God we're fucked.
I think we all know by now collapse is inevitable
Just trying to figure out where to move my 401k at this point. It's completely out of tech now though.
Destroying our nation and our futures for a born rich felon pedophile.
When the (Venezuelan) oil is stolen and the wars are paid for by the taxpayers, everything is profit.
Forgot about this oil reserve, I was thinking he’s laundering Russian oil
I've been waiting for it to crop up. Right after the illegal attack on Venezuela, Trump bragged about personally having a tanker of oil that no one ended up wanting. We had a stable oil supply. Then not too long after that, the attacks on Iran started. I have no idea if it's anything in the grand scheme of grifting and cons and murder but I'm guessing it was a factor in some way.
I always assumed he decided he needed Venezuela’s oil after he was told he would be attacking Iran soon.
I've assumed Trump thought oil= money, not realising Venezuelan oil is among the most expensive to refine. America does however have refining capacity for that type of oil, as to turn the Venezuelan oil profitable he'd attack Iran and hurt international energy trades
My immediate thought is that his billionaire friends (likely oil barons) are subsidizing it until the day after the election, at which point they will reap the profits/bribes. My money is on stolen Venezuelan oil as well.
Its probably just an advertising campaign to try to win the midterms. "SEE, FREEDOM.GAS. VOTE FOR FASCISM PLZ."
Also, isn't there already a gas station chain branded Freedom? Are they violating trademarks?
The economics of importing Russian oil and distilling it into gasoline illicitly do not add up. More likely this is just regular ol gas being sold at a discount as funded by our billionaire overlords
Wouldn't that just be some perfect shit-icing on the shit-cake. If the Freedom Fuel is from Russian oil.
russia doesn't even have gas for themselves... Kazakhstan is giving them fuel.
This is ILLEGAL to Undercut the Competition!
-Free Market Republicans!
This is the same free-market-humping conservative movement whose party head is now slinging around tariffs like they were going out of style...
He paid a bunch of existing gas stations to change their name and lower their prices. He will make up the difference by subsidizing the gas stations using tax payer money. I guarantee you this will not be noticed by the majority.
not by the trump bumpkins, they see this as a win, eventhough its not.
Maybe trumps gambit will be our first step towards socialism. Stranger things have occurred.
This is all you need to know.
Oh shit
Get an electric vehicle and install solar panels ASAP.
My brother in Christ, I own nothing and am going back to Monke. Like fr fr.
Be the change.
I am being the change. No kids. Electric vehicle. Don't eat beef. Actively post about climate change. Promote solar/nuclear power. We can't go back to monke, we must move forward.
Together we have hope. We will never meet and live far away from one another, but we are not alone and one day we will prevail.
Sometimes we need to go back to monke to remember what is is to be man.
One love.
Did you let them take your future family away or did you never want one?
Can't speak for the other being, but I have no desire to inflict this world upon another conscious entity. To do so would just be fucking cruel, knowing what's coming.
I really take issue with your point of view. It's fine to think that way, but keep it to yourself. Others believe there will be a future that conscious entities will enjoy. Will lives be as easy as those of American baby boomers? Probably not. Will lives be filled with endless suffering? Probably not. Why would you want to tell people you think there won't be a future? That's just unnecessary and a bit cruel, imo.
I've never wanted one, I'm okay with the burden of knowledge.
This is like something out of a third world country. "Here is some cheap gas so keep supporting me."
In many important ways, the U.S. already is. Especially in certain parts of the country.
We’ve always been a hood rich country
The Roman's were doing this 2000 years ago
The Roman's what? If you pluralize that way, why not also write year's?
I think the practice is more common with proper nouns and abbreviations. I'd take the underlying principle to be "proper noun and/or abbreviation is special, and we can't just tack on extra letters as we would with other stuff, so apostrophe to the rescue". To be clear, I am not agreeing with this, it just seems to be the driving logic.
I would argue in some (not all) ways, the US is third world. So...yeah.
I want to know the quality of the fuel. I'm betting there's a significant amount of water and other contaminants in it.
It's got what cars crave
GASDO!
The usual Trump quality: Starts at rock bottom and somehow manage to dig down.
Not to mention you credit card details being shared with their network.
Its probably the refined transfats from his blood after a lifetime of daily McDonalds meals.
Probably lead. And electrolytes.
MAGA loves watering everything down!
It’s going to turn out that he is waiving the federal gas tax for some buddies and a cut.
This is not plausible.
The only two things I've seen that are plausible:
Wouldn't it be convenient if this "private retailer" somehow got free access to US fuel reserves?
Or Venezuela's
what happens when your cheap gas is no longer available but all the competitors already dried up?
Walmart
Imagine gas companies going out of business
lord dipshit has managed to bankrupt casinos. not once, not twice... but six times. so why not another industry that, in the u.s. with this 'leadership', can basically print money?
6.47
You dropped this: 8
its likely the ethanol type that damages the engines?
Someone with more capital will buy up the company for peanuts, establish a monopoly, and then raise prices.
Then someone will open a competitor. Petrol distribution isn't a natural monopoly, so without some kind of underhanded behaviour, that scenario won't last.
Trump could ban new competition but he could also ban competition today if he wanted to.
Black markets have entered the chat
"Out of Trump's pocket" LMAO whatever they're on, I'd like to have some.
If it's 25% cheaper, it's probably 40% water.
I mean after all the frakking in some places the water is combustible, so hey they might get away with it for a minute!
Seeing what he did so far, it's 100% used toilet water, maybe even without the water part.
Government subsidized gas is not an issue. But that's not what's going on. Trump is pocketing the money, cutting the gas with something else, selling stolen gas, or using tax payer funds for it (the last of which is whatever), but whatever he is doing isn't being done out of the goodness of his heart.
He's just using it short term to gain fame and when he runs out of gas he says it's the dems fault. Then the magats cheer
All that Venezuelan oil has to be going somewhere. And someone who isn't the Venezuelan or American Govt is getting paid.
50% water
And making people drive all over looking for it. So you get "E85" (I can guarantee it'll be closer to the 50% ethanol than the 80% side), long lines, more traffic and a bad reputation for the gas stations where people buy bad gas.
No cars specifically without flex fuel can run on anything over E85. He's just draining reserves.
Maybe stock but people tune older cars to run on E85 all the time
If you need to tune the car for it to handle the fuel, it wouldn't go unnoticed is the point.
Considering they already lifted regulations on percentage of ethanol added I can only assume this is %15 gas lol
Bottoms up, bois!
They will use up everything they can. And when they lose blame everything on Democrats.
If they win, they don't care about people complaining.
I keep seeing claims that Trump is doing this, but I have not seen anyone make any actual assertions of an evidence to that effect.
While Trump has jumped on the promotion, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's in on it somehow, it really sounds to me like some MAGA asshat who's trying to take advantage for publicity.
I'd really like to know who's paying for it, though, and why. Maybe it's just an introductory price to convince people they'll sell it for less, but I don't see how that'll get long-term customers.
Either way, the wild claims with nothing to back them up (i.e. OP's title) really annoy me. There's so much to be angry at. Fabricating lies is not needed. Or certainly saying things that are not known to be true - even the article doesn't say Trump is doing this, just the submitted title.
You can always tell when someone doesn’t read the article, sees the headline, and jumps straight into the comments because it’s literally right there in both the article and the short version.
At the beginning of the article referenced:
I mean, did Trump come up with this idea? Very unlikely. I mean we all know how he operates at this point. Someone approaches him with an idea or product, and all Trump does is slap his name on it, ie: Trump Steaks, Trump Mobile, etc. and then he collects the royalties or kickbacks or whatever.
Again, you clearly didn’t read the article
Not my title, the community rules state:
It’s in the actual article, not the TL;DR version for brevity because people don’t read full articles.
What, do you expect him to run it personally or something? It’s directly posted on the whitehouse.gov site. While everyone out here is using him to make money, if it’s on the .gov website it doesn’t really matter who came up with the idea, he stamped it, and had it put up on a government official site. If you want a list of where these actually are, they’re available on the Freedom Fuel website. Feel free to go drive out to them.
Likely both. The fuel has to come from somewhere. An established refinery or distributor has to be involved. You can't just sell gas from a lemonade pitcher, stations are highly regulated as well.
My guess would be some donor and some oil industry VP of Bafoonery came up with a plan to force prices lower in a couple states with important seats coming up in the midterms. Just for the good vibes. The lower price forces everyone else to drop to at-cost sales. And the legal top cover you get Miller, T-Shiz, and Bessent.
Is it possible Trump or MAGA or someone affiliated is trying to make the entire fuel station system go belly up in Pennsilvania so that they can have the monopoly?
I think it's more likely to influence midterms. But who knows. Heh
I'm fairly sure the business was traced back to a corporation that Trump dealt with in previous instances.
Trump Freedom Fuel now with more high fructose syrup.
It's got what plants crave.
I gotta say, I thought the economy was way more fragile and would have no chance to withstand this concerted effort to bring it down. I mean it will 💯 go down in biblical flames, I'm just amazed it took so long!
I think the people who are trying to make it happen are surprised to. Doesn't matter to them because they will end up owning the planet anyway, but still!
You gotta remember that since the invention of the 401(k), the US economy has been propped up by the life savings of...well, pretty much everybody, at this point. Lots of institutional money, legally required to be invested in certain places, gives a lot of cushion for slashing and burning.
For now.
Ai bubble came out of nowhere
Trump is going to go down in history as the most successful career criminal ever.
My first thought at first headline was "now I'm outright paying for these motherfuckers' gas too?"
Ok here's my supposition:
The summary is: wealthy donor(s) are covering the loss so Trump doesn't lose the midterms.
The longer version is: most fuel consumed in the US is produced domestically. There no "shortage" because of the Iran situation, but prices increase because there's no alternative putting downward pressure on prices.
Suppose some domestic producer decided that the cost to them of trump being impeached is greater than the profit foregone by selling fuel at less than market rates.
Or, suppose Trump said to local producers, if you keep me in office we will keep this Iran thing going indefinitely, so process are down when he needs them to be but can go back up after an election.
No matter how you slice it, seems like a recipe for hyper wealth concentration.
US is a net exporter of refined fuels (what you put in your car), but the US doesn't produce the heavy crude that its refineries are all set up to convert into that fuel.
It's like saying you produce more cakes than you consume. That doesn't really mean shit when you run out of sugar, bomb the supermarket, mine the roads between you and the supermarket, and burn all the bridges between you and your neighbors. Can't exactly "borrow a cup of sugar" your way out of this one.
Whataa beautiful analogy!
"gas"
https://www.jalopnik.com/2210988/donald-trump-giving-communism-try-government-approved/
When I first heard this story, the article gave me a laugh.
Communism is when gas prices low.
I wouldn't trust this fuel to start a forest fire, let alone fuel a car.
You can't make this up
Willing to wager these gasoline inventories are getting diluted well beyond our normal summer blend thresholds.
Imagine if you were someone with no moral scruples and a lust for making more money than you ever need, and you somehow become the US president. How can you make lots of money off the position without being so blatantly corrupt that you actually end up in jail?
Well, you have the power to make decisions, decisions which drastically affect things like the oil price. You could monetise this small time by making bets on prediction markets, or maybe buying futures low and selling high, but that's a higher risk strategy after you lose the presidency and has limits to how much you can make.
To think bigger, you could leverage the retail petrol industry. Normal participants buy wholesale and sell quickly at retail prices aligned to the replacement cost of what they are selling. They don't usually stockpile large amounts, because they have no insight into what oil prices will do, and don't want to take the risk. But if you are the president, you can influence that price, so you have a a strategy no one else has to profit big: drive the prices down through government actions, build up a large reserve wholesale while the prices are low, and when your reserve is full, drive up oil prices (antagonising another country into disrupting oil transport will do, for example). Your competitors put up their prices, and you undercut them and sell your reserves at a price significantly higher than what you paid, but less than your competitors are paying to replace their reserves.
You keep the level of your reserves, and your next move secret (refill reserves at the current higher price and try to drive prices even higher, or drain reserves, then lower prices with a fig leaf deal to the country you antagonised, refill reserves, and then drive higher again). This way, competitors can't copy your strategy and reduce your profits, and they lose while you get richer.
Of course, all this is net destroying value for the world and your country as a whole - you are shrinking the pie, but none of that matters because you yourself get a much larger slice, and who cares about anyone else?
I guess if you keep it up long enough you can drive your competitors out of business then buy up their businesses on the cheap. Which if things are heading for a make America great again depression then that strategy ends up accumulating cash to then buy up assets for pennies on the dollar.
This is the glut of Venezuelan oil that Trump is stealing from their country and probably selling to his buddies in the refinery business for cheap.
This really doesn't make sense if you have even the little knowledge I have of how the petroleum pipeline works (and I know very little). Oil is refined in refineries and gets sent out in bulk. At the more local level, it's all the same gas - companies put in additives that can be per-brand, but the gas going to one gas station is the same basic gas going to another.
Perhaps there's a financial thing going on where they put cheap oil in and so sign contracts for a lower price on the other end or something, but it's not going to be that same oil.
So when I see assertions like this that get popular support and agreement, I find it bothersome. I'd rather know the truth than make random accusations. The truth is bad enough without bringing fiction in.
Couldn't you say that all US gas stations are suspiciously cheap? This is just a little more straightforward, but it is a pretty subsidized industry. Unless I'm thinking about that wrong.
Honestly, how do most countries gas stations work, do they purchase fuel from the government?
Confused where he has got this chearp fuel from - is he selling the reseve?
Venezuela maybe?
Bro MAGA is copying Russia again!
Targeting Pennsylvania metros and other swing states near you!
PENNSYLVANIa already drank the koolaid more than once.
News story about the oil being watered down to the point you get extremely low mileage in 3... 2... 1...
Would be even funnier if it was some high ethanol blend.
So that's what happened to the oil he stole from Iran?
Venezuelan petrol.
Me, Laughs in electric bicycle.
Please look up how electricity is generated in your area, your laughter will be short lived if its in Cali or most of the east coast as most of it is still on fossil fuels
Even if electricity were all created ONLY using standard car gasoline, generating electricity in bulk on some.giant fucking motor and distributing it out to electric vehicles, would be more efficient than a million little engines running around stopping and accellerating and generting power to power one vehicle.
Hell even generating it using a room full of standard car motors would be more efficient because they could be set to always run at peak fuel efficiency RPMs and gearing (which by design in cars is like 55-60mph).
I think you're missing my point here. Its not that the previous commenter should feel bad or is not being efficient, its that fossil fuels still power a large part of our grid and if there is a fuel shortage, your efficiency won't matter.
Still coming out way ahead for how much fossil fuel you're using to do the same job
Again, not a note on the efficiency of an ebike, I don't think any serious person has ever made the argument against an ebike over an ICE. Just a thought on that we should be aware of where the electricity that powers our grid is coming from. Hopefully those thoughts turn into an internet search and then into votes. Places like Cali and NE like to drive their EVs but are still fully reliant on fossil fuels.
Surely a power plant is still more efficient than a small engine.
It is, in is by a huge margin. Doing things in bulk, efficient, standardized ways, will always be more efficient, for any task.
Look up transmission and transformer losses
still negligible compared to the inefficiency of an internal combustion engine
Huh. Looked up the numbers and you're right
The ICE that has been tweaked and optimized for more than a century is literally almost 10x less efficient , even accounting for power line resistance, impedance from transformers, AC/DC converstion, etc
Yep this is why non plug-in hybrids work, by using the battery for regenerative recharge and then using that to reduce engine load you increase the efficiency to about 30% - 35%
Its very small.
FWIW, though its been a while, I have done the math for this sort of stuff back when I was studying Mechanical Engineering in college.
The point is everyone is still dependant on fossil fuels. Having an electeic car or bike won't save you from rolling blackouts
Not much comes from oil. It's mostly coal, ng, hydro, nuclear, wind, etc. We could have a fuel (gasoline/oil) crisis and he will still laugh.
Plus, an ebike is ridiculously more efficient per unit energy. Any macro thing you're trying to get at is solved by ebikes.
Notice the part where I said fossil fuels, not just oil, and where half the stuff you listed were fossil fuels. The issue is still an issue. If homie wants to laugh, then so be it, but let's not pretend like this crisis won't affect all of us down the line.
Notice the part how this is about an oil crisis?
Oil crisis leads them to look for the next quick fix, which are the other fossil fuels. Let's not be so dense as to think it stops there.
Quick fix isn't going to fill up our gas tanks with coal tomorrow. So his Ebike during this oil crisis is fine. We can break this down. Ok I've explained things but you seem intent on combining everything together so ciao.
But coal, NG, etc will power our grids tomorrow, and you seem intent on pretending like its not all connected. ✌️
Best thing you can do right now is learn to live without a car and vote people who support anything about public transportation especially if that includes trains and trolleys and building more
I live in a state where it’s almost impossible to be without a vehicle. I’ve always wanted to move to a more walkable city with public transit.
Only 11% of Americans live in walkable cities… That ain’t realistic.
I mean same but gas/cars do not look sustainable
Okay I'll just walk 25 miles to my job every day til they get those trains put in.
55 miles for my husband :(
I'm in the same situation but it doesn't change the fact this is not sustainable and this not going to become easier anytime soon for any of us
It's not a thing. Trumpbjust made it up. Source: MrGlobal, on YouTube and substack.
Was wrong! My guy Mr Global just posted. He thinks this is marketing budget being used to subsidies the price. Trump announced a freedom fuel thing July 4 that was fake. Now someone grabbed the name I guess.
I'm all for hating on Trump as much as the next guy, but gas prices by me are around $3.39 across the board, so I don't understand how the GaaBuddy CEO can say a price like that is impossible.
If you see one of these stations:
BUY THE GAS
They are selling well under market value, it’s a loss, they aren’t making money off it, it isn’t taxpayer subsidized.
This is the equivalent of someone making a toll free number to report rainbow painted sidewalks, everyone needs to call in and run up the phone bill with fake reports.
Make them piss away their money.
That’s like saying: everyone buy from Amazon, they’re undercutting everyone and taking a loss. Buy while the getting’s good.
Then when the competition suffers and options are reduced, prices will creep up and they’ve established themselves as a moderately successful brand. That’s just standard playbook stuff.
Start a business at a loss by offering a deal too good to be true, ex: Disney+ for $1 a month, then pull consumers away and build your name, then price creep.
Plus as others have mentioned it’s either stolen, or diluted. No way they’re offering fuel at the same quality (detergent gasoline) as you’d get at like Shell, Mobile, or Chevron.
They are moving in and taking over the economy wholesale, it is clear as day, and we are letting them do precisely that.
It is a bona fide rape of modern civilization and democracy. We are looking at centuries of the dark ages coming at us full speed, if we can even survive that long.
Not the same. Buying the gas is spending some conservative’s money. You’re not going to be a blip on the radar of amazon, and spending a little less money at these “Freedom” BS stations that will likely last a couple weeks with trump’s fruitfly-length attention span is not gonna kill “gas station main street” the way massive big box and online retailers did.
All that said, if these stations start to get taxpayer money or grow artificially thanks to some trump pump-and-dump (hah, pump…gas…get it? Anyway…) screw ‘em.
Gas in Wisconsin has been fluctuating around $3.40-3.60 the last two weeks, today its $3.49. This is not just Costco and Woodman's, but also some pure gas stations like Citgo. According to the article they must all be loosing money. Is there anything I'm missing here?
My guess would be that different regions have different costs associated with transport and different tax requirements.
Taxes on gas seem to be particularly high in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. Nevertheless, after searching a bit, there is also a Philly gas station around Philadelphia selling it for... $3.47. To me, this outrage about Freedom Fuel feels either like effective marketing, or its other Petro companies trying to keep out a competitor to justify their profitable "market prices". Even if its something else, it seems effective enough to have Democrats defending the Petroleum industries pricing practice.
Well, you see, different areas of the country have different prices for things. For instance: a 1200 sqft house in Los Angeles might sell for $1.5M, while the same house might sell for $300k in Lake Minnetonka. Due to real estate costs, simple things need to be sold for more money to make up the cost of renting/buying that store space. A gallon of milk is only $2 in Danville, IN but costs $5 in Los Angeles. Gas can cost $6.39 in Los Angeles at the same time as only being $2.89 in Tuscaloosa, AL.
Proximity to refineries also makes a difference in price. So, if you see all the stations in NJ and PA charging $3.85 to $4.49, then that is going to be the rough cost for that area, even if it is much higher than in your area.
EDIT: States also charge different taxes on gas.