ConocoPhillips announces deals to sell Mobil gasoline stations

HOUSTON (AP) -- In two deals worth $453 million, ConocoPhillips plans to sell 1,180 Mobil-branded gasoline stations.
The deals announced Tuesday fit with two of ConocoPhillips' goals: to reduce the number of stations it owns and operates, and to divest stations or wholesale relationships involving brands other than Phillips 66, Conoco or 76.
The reason Houston-based ConocoPhillips, the combination of Conoco and Phillips Petroleum, has Mobil in its portfolio traces to pre-merger days. Tosco Corp., later acquired by Phillips, bought Mobil-branded stations or relationships after regulators required asset sales as a condition of the merger that created Exxon Mobil.
Under one deal announced Tuesday, Getty Petroleum Marketing, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian Lukoil Oil Co., agreed to buy 795 stations or wholesale relationships for about $266 million. The stations are in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
In the other, Philadelphia-based Sunoco is to spend $187 million, plus the cost of inventory, on 385 stations or wholesale relationships in Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
Both are expected to close in the second quarter.
A ConocoPhillips spokeswoman told the Houston Chronicle that the company has and will continue to have wholesale relationships with about 13,000 stations.
The company previously said it expected to have only 300 to 350 company owned and operated gas stations by mid-2004.