AMID TIGHT REFINING MARGINS, RETAILING BECOMES PRIMARY DOWNSTREAM FOCUS

Hart's Petroleum Finance Week, February, 2002

With U.S. refined product margins so tight, integrated oil companies and independent refiner-marketers are trying to make their domestic retailing networks more profitable. Current initiatives range from Shell Oil Co.'s ambitious rebranding of some 13,000 U.S. Texaco outlets to Murphy Oil Corp. (NYSE: MUR) and Sunoco Inc.'s (NYSE: SUN) proliferating leases with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT). Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) also plans to rebrand and upgrade retail properties it acquired when it completed its purchase of Ultramar Diamond Shamrock Corp. at the end of 2001.

Petroleum retailing operations face significantly fewer political and environmental constraints than refining in the United States, executives from four companies told participants in UBS Warburg LLC's...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.