WOODBURY, Minn. -- Northern Tier Retail LLC, which does business under the SuperAmerica and Tesoro brands and is a subsidiary of Andeavor, has acquired Croix Oil Co.’s convenience retailing assets, consisting of all 13 of Croix's company-operated convenience stores.
Based in Stillwater, Minn., Croix Oil operates in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, primarily in the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area. It is a fuel distributor for BP, ExxonMobil and Marathon and is a SuperAmerica and Circle K franchisee.
Croix's roots date back to the John J. Kilty Co., which began operations in the late 1800s as a coal company. In 1964, John Ogren purchased the company and renamed it the Kilty-Ogren Petroleum Co. In the 1960s, their primary business consisted of bulk fuel and heating oil sales and operated a single service station. In 1972, the company changed its name to Croix Oil and expanded into various related businesses, including trucking, commercial and industrial fuels, lubricants, branded and unbranded retail fuels supply, convenience-store operations and real estate (focusing primarily on petroleum retail properties).
In 1995, John's son, Mark Ogren, became president of the company, and over the past 20 years, Croix Oil has refocused its business on the retail and wholesale distribution of motor fuels. It has grown rapidly since the early 2000s through single-site acquisitions, new-to-industry builds and the acquisition of approximately one-third of BP's stations in the Twin Cities when BP divested its assets in 2006.
Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc., Richmond, Va., an independent investment bank, provided merger and acquisition advisory services to Croix Oil.
Also, D&M Oil LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dubuque, Iowa-based Molo Petroleum LLC, has acquired Croix Oil wholesale fuel assets, consisting of five dealer and three commissioned sites and approximately 70 supply contracts. Molo is a wholesale fuel distributor and also operates 14 Big 10 mart c-stores in eastern Iowa and western Illinois.
Andeavor itself is being acquired. In April, Findlay, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Corp. entered into a merger with San Antonio-based Andeavor through which Marathon Petroleum will acquire all of Andeavor’s outstanding shares, representing a total equity value of $23.3 billion. Marathon Petroleum’s Speedway LLC, Enon, Ohio, is No. 3 on CSP’s 2018 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by number of company-owned retail outlets. Andeavor is No. 7.
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