Todd Palin has surprising tie to Venezuela-owned oil company

Mystik Lubricants was a sponsor of the Davis-Palin team

By Garance Franke-Ruta
As a vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin condemned Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as a "dictator" and called for "energy independence ... to allow us to be less and less reliant on someone like Hugo Chavez."

Venezuela, one of the top suppliers of oil to the United States, "wanted to use energy sources as a weapon" under Chavez, she said.

But Palin's anti-Venezuela sentiments do not appear to extend to her husband, whose snowmobile racing team was sponsored by a division of Citgo, the retail arm of Venezuela's state-owned oil and gas company.

Todd Palin's Iron Dog snowmobile team competed this year under a sponsorship from Mystik Lubricants, which was founded in Texas in 1922 but now resides under the Citgo corporate banner.

"Mystik Lubricants is a proud sponsor of Scott Davis and Todd Palin, competitors in the 2010 Iron Dog," the company said on its site. "Mystik is ... a sponsor of Team #22 Scott Davis and Todd Palin -- past Iron Dog Champions. Davis Racing team which includes Scott Davis, Todd Palin, Regina Daniels, Cory Davis and Carly Davis accepted Mystik Lubricants' sponsorship offer."

Mystik Lubricants was also the "exclusive engine oil sponsor for the 2010 Iron Dog Snowmobile Race," supplying the competitors with 250 cases of snowmobile oil and 500 Mystik safety vests for volunteers, according to its Web site.

A spokesman for Citgo confirmed that Mystik Lubricants is a Citgo brand, and not a separate company. A Palin adviser referred questions to the Iron Dog race organizers. Iron Dog organizers and the Citgo spokesman were not immediately able to provide information on what corporate sponsorship of a snowmobile team entailed.

The Davis-Palin team dropped out of this year's Iron Dog race early after injuries and mechanical problems put them at the back of the pack.

After the race ended, Sarah Palin went on to appear in a video spot for the Iditarod sled-dog race standing in front of a snowmobile bearing the Mystik logo.

"She did it as basically a little promotional for the race," said Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George. The Mystik-logo snowmobile was in the shot, he said, "because her husband is an Iron Dog participant and she loves both of those sports and she refers to both of those sports."

Palin was not paid by the Iditarod organizers to do the promotion, St. George said.

Chavez has also been a critic of Palin's, dismissing her in 2008 as "a beauty queen that they've pulled out to be a figurehead."

Questions about Todd Palin's Iron Dog sponsor were first raised last week on Alaska blogs.