The dispute between the operators and Exxon Mobil Corp., Houston, was sparked by a decision the company made last June to sell off gas stations they still owned and leased to the small business owners who ran them essentially under a franchise system.
Fifty-four [image-nocss] gas station operators filed a lawsuit for injunctive relief last month in the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md. They alleged that Exxon Mobil is violating federal regulations by not offering the operators the first chance to buy the stations before offering them to other potential buyers.
Steve Merrill, who has operated an Exxon gas station in Towson, Md., for the past 17 years, helped form Local Dealers United and rallied the dealers to oppose the sale of their stations. The lawsuit includes gas-station dealers who operate in the Baltimore and Frederick area, and the Washington suburbs in Maryland.
Merrill said the gas-station operators are worried that ExxonMobil will sell the stations they lease to local fuel distributors, forcing the operators into relationships with potential competitors.
Merrill said such arrangements would ultimately lead to higher gas prices for consumers.
"When we purchased these franchises, we purchased them to be in partnership with one of the largest companies in the world," Merrill told the newspaper. "We did not consent to being partners with a small local company that's our direct competitor."
Kevin M. Allexon, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, declined to comment on the lawsuit to the newspaper.
At the time of the announcement of the sale, ExxonMobil had about 12,000 branded stations in the United States, but only owned about 2,200 of them. Of those 2,200, about 1,400 were operated by dealers, and the remaining 800 were owned and operated by ExxonMobil. In Maryland, about 170 gas stations were operated by dealers who had leased the businesses from ExxonMobil, according to Merrill.
ExxonMobil wants to exit the direct-retail gasoline market because of its hyper-competitiveness and low profit margins, the newspaper reported, and has sought to sell off its holdings to other companies that would continue to sell gasoline under its brand name.
Merrill said his group has tried to communicate and negotiate with ExxonMobil on the possible sale of the Maryland stations to the dealer-operators, but the company has refused to talk to them.
A similar dispute related to ExxonMobil and its gas station operators cropped up in New Jersey. In that state, legislators passed a law this year granting operators the "right of first refusal" whenever a retail gas station property was about to be sold.
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