Gas Stations with Pakistani, Iranian, Iraqi, Indian, and UAE owners are earning millions a day!

I grew up with the typical 7/11 around every corner in Houston, Tx. back in the early 80’s, and I believe that it was the first memory of finally getting the Towel Head “joke” in reference to the corner store owner/worker. In 1985 I moved to East Texas where the majority of the stores where Mom and Pop stores, and very few “foreign” owned businesses for the most part. Ever since the late ’90s there have been an ever increasing amount of gas stations, liquor stores, donut palaces, and used car lots that are no longer owned by the Mom and Pop, but now they are owned by the Mohamed and Punjab. I am not placing any foreign phobias onto our Arab brothers, Heck, the United States of America was founded by foreigners according to the Lakotah, Cherokee, Opalaka and Swanee people, so lets not get too technical with the term foreign. I use the word foreign in the sense that I did not see any nationalities other than Mexican, American, and one Indian doctor for many years, then around 2000 AD a group that was foreign to many East Texans started buying up small businesses all over rural Texas.

In keeping with my, “Never trust any one” mentality, I continue to ask “Why have there been so many small businesses that have, either failed with typically Caucasian family business owners in all parts of rural Texas, and why can a new non-native ( 5 or more generations born in a Texas county ) Texan family sell the same goods as the previous owners and seem to make a better living? I always follow the money, and the following may help shed light as to when the take over took place, but I am still trying to find out why…

The USA has perhaps 200,000 gas stations and used an average of 385 million US liquid gallons each day in 2005 (which was only 44% of the over all petroleum consumption for the U.S.), which now in 2008 at $3.16 a gallon adds up to $1,216,600,000.00 spent by Americans each day on gasoline.

According to national figures from the U.S. Department of Energy, in March 2007,
52% of the cost of gasoline went to pay for crude oil ($632,632,000.00),
24% for refining ($291,984,000.00),
15% to taxes ($182,490,000.00),
and 9% for distribution and marketing ($109,494,000.00).
America spends $444,059,000,000.00 a year in gasoline

–”Many gas stations went out of business in the 1990s, when federal environmental laws began
requiring expensive upgrades that mom and pop owners could not afford. Underground storage
tanks must be removed before anything else is built on the land. Worse, petroleum, oil and other
contaminants sometimes have leaked into underground drinking water supplies.
“Nobody wants to touch them,” says Daniele Cervino, vice president of Environmental Waste
Management Associates, a New Jersey company that helps clients acquire grants to redevelop
contaminated sites. “But most of them are not even heavily contaminated.”
In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency began offering grants to clean up old gas stations.
In 2002, the federal Brownfields Revitalization Act expanded the definition of brownfields to
include land contaminated by petroleum. It provided $50 million for cleanup and redevelopment of
abandoned gas stations. Several states also offer such grants.” — Haya El Nasser. USA TODAY. McLean, Va.: Jan 19, 2004. pg. A.03

So in conclusion, the fact that many older gas stations where owned by the American small business owners from the 50’s until the late 90’s and did not find the renovations and environmental upgrades for the tanks as cost effective, this gap of dilapidated real estate made for a good investment for potential foreign small business owners to buy up old gas station property, thus spawning a new and ever increasing market for the sale of oil. So the oil is pumped out of the ground in Iran, processed there, perhaps shipped to Houston as crude, but then sold to Americans from Iranian owned stores. How long is an Iranian work visa anyway? Gas Prices from around the World

admin @ March 11, 2008