Citgo says customers affected by Florida fuel contamination should file claims

Citgo customers should file claims if they think their vehicles were affected by a widespread fuel contamination in Florida, the company said Monday.

More than two dozen Citgo gas stations along the Gulf Coast may have received contaminated gas mixed with diesel fuel that could harm or disable engines, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said in an alert Sunday. Customers who purchased the gas after 10 a.m. Saturday may have been affected.

If someone bought fuel from one of the affected gas stations on or after Saturday, they can begin a claim at: www.citgo.com/contact-us.

Customers should fill out complaints under the “triclean gasoline quality guaranteed” dropdown option, the company said in a statement. It’s not clear how long responses to the claims might take. The company said it is committed to resolving each complaint as quickly as possible.

Florida officials also opened a hotline to receive complaints from people who believe they bought the bad fuel. People can call 1-800-435-7352 or make a complaint at fdacs.gov.

Citgo said it discovered contaminated gas at the Port Tampa Bay terminal on Saturday as a result of a “product routing issue” and immediately ordered a shutdown of the fuel “rack,” or pipeline, that was mixing the diesel fuel with gasoline.

Citgo distributors who lifted gasoline mixed with diesel fuel from the terminal between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. that day were notified and were asked to stop sales. The company is “currently coordinating efforts” to remove the product from the retail locations that received it, the spokesperson said.

At a Monday afternoon news conference in Largo, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he doesn’t expect the incident will have a major impact on the state’s fuel supply, and about 29 gas stations likely received the contaminated gas.

If a person filled their vehicle at one of the stations identified by Citgo, “Just beware: You may have ended up having a cross-contamination,” DeSantis said. “Maybe it’s just a little diesel, and it’ll get diluted. But if it was all diesel, that’s going to cause a problem.”

Some of the impacted stations have already had remediation, and others are going to be remediated through Monday and Tuesday, DeSantis said.

Citgo operates inside Port Tampa Bay, but privately owns the land it operates on, hires its own employees and conducts its operations independently, said port spokesperson Lisa Wolf-Chason.

Wolf-Chason told the Times on Monday that, despite Citgo’s fuel mix-up, the port still expects to have plenty of fuel to provide to customers as the region braces for the impacts of Tropical Storm Idalia, which is anticipated to become a major hurricane over the next two days before impacting Florida.

“We have plenty of fuel to weather the storm,” Wolf-Chason said.