FOX POINT, Wis. -- For the second time this month, BP has contracted with a petroleum wholesaler to take over supplying its stores in a market. This time, the major oil company has sold the Twin Cities, Minn., market to Lakeside Oil Co. of Fox Point, Wis.
A pure wholesaler, Lakeside Oil intends to allow dealers, including many of those who have been operating the BP-owned sites, to run the stores themselves, Jack Sobczak, general sales manager of Lakeside Oil, told CSP Daily News. The dealers have the right of first refusal [to purchase the stores], [image-nocss] he said. We have an agreement to buy those that the dealers don't exercise.
BP officials had no comment on the deal because the dealers still have about 40 days to decide whether they want to purchase their sites or not. Sobczak, however, said this is another case of the major oil company getting out of the c-store-owner business. BP is exiting the market from a direct-marketing standpoint, said Sobczak. We've done this before with them in Madison, Wis.
Earlier this month, BP made a similar deal with Carroll Independent Fuel Co. for the 70 stores in the Baltimore markets. In both cases, the stores will remain BP-branded.
In similar deals in the past, BP has said such sales are part of an ongoing review of the company's retail assets.
The Minnesota deal includes about 60 stores. For Lakeside Oil, which supplies several hundred stores in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, this is the first venture into Minnesota.
The No. 1 objective is to try and accommodate the existing retailer. These are all dealer sites anyway, and our objective is to help the dealers buy them, Sobczak said. We will continue to have either the incumbent retailer or a retailer of similar ilk [take over those stores].
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