CHELSEA, Mass. -- Joseph H. Petrowski, CEO of Gulf Oil LP, told the Boston Herald that the oil company plans to expand the number of Gulf's franchised stations in the Northeast by about 500 stations within three years, bringing the total number of its stations to 3,000.
The company is also expanding its biodiesel business and other projects, and the already $7 billion company will be getting much bigger and more influential, said the report.
Chelsea, Mass.-based Gulf is a division of Cumberland Farms, Canton, Mass. Gulfonce one [image-nocss] of the Seven Sisters of the oil industrywas broken up in the mid 1980s when rival Chevron purchased the then-Pittsburgh-based oil company, said the report. Chevron was forced to divest many of its assets in order to comply with antitrust regulations. Cumberland Farms eventually brought on a co-investor, Catamount Petroleum.
Last year Cumberland Farms exercised its option to buy out Catamount and brought in Petrowski to grow the business.
Gulf has a great brand name that we want to leverage, said Petrowski, 52, former president of Consolidated Natural Gas in Pittsburgh and a former energy trader and consultant who was serving on Cumberland Farm's board when he was tapped to serve as Gulf's top exec.
Gulf is no longer in the exploration and drilling business, and it is now a purely downstream oil company that owns terminals and a biodiesel plant, as well as overseeing its franchise operations, the report said.
Besides its planned franchise expansions, Gulf is already the nation's leader in the production of biodiesel, according to the newspaperusing leftover vegetable oils and grease that are processed to be used as additives to dieselthrough its owned and leased production plants in Florida, Texas and Deleware.
It's going to be a good profit opportunity for us, Petrowski said of biodiesel expansion.
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