USA Petroleum Buys New Base in Ventura

USA Petroleum Corp., one of California’s largest independent gasoline retailers, has purchased a building in Ventura and will move its headquarters there from Santa Monica within a year.

The privately held concern, which operates 240 USA self-service gas stations throughout the United States and in Puerto Rico, will offer the 53 current employees at its corporate office a chance to transfer to the new location on Chestnut Street in downtown Ventura. The site was formerly occupied by a branch of now-defunct Santa Barbara Savings.

“Some of the people now working in Santa Monica probably won’t want to make the move,” said USA Petroleum spokesman Bill Stewart. “We’ll replace them with residents of Ventura County. We expect, however, to reduce our corporate staff by about five because of improved efficiency.”

Lyle Schlyer, USA’s general counsel and secretary, said the company chose Ventura County for its new headquarters “because the county is probably more centrally located than Santa Monica as far as our California operations are concerned.” Most of USA’s 100 stations in the U.S. mainland are in California, Schlyer said. He noted that seven of the units are in Ventura County. Schlyer added that another reason for the decision to move to Ventura County is “a general feeling among our officers and employees that they’d like to live there.”