NAPERVILLE, Ill. -- Gasoline suppliers large and small are scrambling to land contracts to supply the more than 1,800 CITGO stations that will be debranded over the next year. Among those who have openly shown an interest so far are Clark Brands, Double S Petroleum Ltd., Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy.
Most of the states that CITGO is withdrawing from are either states that we're currently in or are contiguous to states that we're in today, Karl Goodhouse, president of Naperville, Ill.-based Clark Brands, told CSP Daily News. [But] we're not limited [image-nocss] geographically. We can go literally into any of the 48, probably 50, states. Our strategy is to grow the Clark brand wherever we can add value to our customers' businesses.
Clark Brands announced in a statement its intent to aggressively offer the Clark brand and licensing program to marketers in all 10 states, as well as in certain Texas markets affected by CITGO's recent withdrawal announcement.
Earlier this month, as previously reported in CSP Daily News, Venezuela-owned CITGO Petroleum Corp., with headquarters in Houston, announced it will realign its U.S. retail gasoline network footprint, halting distribution in 10 states and discontinuing supply to some stations in four additional states. CITGO said it is making the move to deal with a 130,000-barrel-a-day fuel shortfall, which has forced the company to buy gasoline on the open market, putting it at a competitive disadvantage.
We think we're the right branding and credit-card solution for CITGO marketers and independent distributors alike, Goodhouse said. And we want to talk to every CITGO distributor in every market affected by CITGO's re-alignment and tell them about Clark and our programs.
And those marketers can expect calls from others as well.
We are definitely meeting with impacted marketers in North Texas and in other areas of the country, Mary Rose Brown, spokesperson for San Antonio-based Valero, told the San Antonio Express-News. We are obviously very interested in supplying these marketers.
Similarly, San Antonio-based Tesoro said it is interested in selling fuel to CITGO stores, according to the report. We are looking for where we might be able to supply product to some of their stations, spokesperson Natalie Silva told the newspaper. She declined to specify what area Tesoro finds most attractive.
In Texas, CITGO's decision will mean 534 Texas stations must find new suppliers. And wholesale distributor Double S Petroleum, San Antonio, is among those energy companies hoping to win some new contracts. We're actively out there. We have salesmen knocking on doors, Brad Smith, whose family owns the company, told the Express-News. Everybody in my business is visiting these stores.
But Goodhouse said he thinks Clark Brands, which recently entered the Tennessee and Texas markets, provides something some of the others cannot. We, first and foremost, license the Clark brand to independent distributors who manage their own supply. So we don't have to have supply set up. We don't have to have terminals or supply logistics in place, he said. It allows us to move with speed and devise the right business solutions with our customers, and then we have relationships with suppliers in various markets, so if a marketer would like help with supply, we can call on those people and put them together with our customers. But we don't post the price; we don't tell our customers what they have to pay for product. The customer has the luxury of managing their own cost of goods.
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