BP is selling hundreds of petrol stations as electric cars advance

With sales approaching 50% of the market, the major oil company is abandoning 310 distributors in the Netherlands that are no longer profitable. And it's not the only one.

By: Francesco Barontini

Nov 9, 2024 at 2:42am ET

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British Petroleum is selling hundreds of service stations in the Netherlands. The major London-based oil group no longer sees them as a profitable investment as service areas on Dutch soil have very high land rental and management costs and are no longer worthwhile.

So why are they no longer profitable? The answer is easy to see: because of developments in the local car market. Electric cars are expected to account for more than 50% of the market by the end of 2024. That's why BP prefers to monetise its own service station network rather than invest in it.

A multi-million euro operation

According to the Dutch media, which interviewed a spokesman for the British oil company, BP plans to sell up to 310 stations. However, it is not clear whether it will sell them all together or separately, perhaps in different packages.

If successful, the deal could raise hundreds of millions, if not billions, of euros. To give an idea of the scale of this initiative, we need only recall that Shell, BP's competitor, paid €12.3 million for the 15-year lease of a service station on the motorway between Amsterdam and Utrecht.

Like all the others

British Petroleum is not the only multinational oil company to have taken this route. Earlier this year, TotalEnergies signed an agreement with Canada's Couche-Tard to sell all its service stations in Germany and the Netherlands. There are 1,198 service stations in Germany and 392 in the Netherlands.

Une station-service BP

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Shell itself, which has paid a million dollars in rent to keep the aforementioned service area in operation, has announced that it wants to reduce the number of its service stations by at least 1,000.
The reasons, although different from one company to another, are all linked to the ecological transition. TotalEnergies wants to invest in the creation of a hydrogen distribution network. Shell, for its part, is pushing for the development of an extensive network of recharging stations across Europe.

British Petroleum, for its part, is acting on several fronts. It is investing in Gogoro, the Eastern giant of electric scooters, buying Superchargers from Tesla and investing in renewable energies to convert refineries into offshore wind farms.