ExxonMobil could have trouble selling gas stations

— -- ExxonMobil, the highest-profit company in the world in recent times, is selling its 2,220 company-owned U.S. gasoline stations, in part because it's gotten so hard to make money selling gas and diesel fuel to consumers.

Unloading the stations, which account for about 19% of some 12,000 Exxon and Mobil stations in the USA, should streamline ExxonMobil's xom retail operation. It will cut costs by allowing it to deal with petroleum distributors who run or oversee many of the stations, instead of dealing with individual stations. The distributor system "is pretty efficient for us," ExxonMobil spokeswoman Premlata Nair said Thursday.

Whether distributors will queue up to pay hefty prices to buy the Exxon and Mobil sites is uncertain, however. A report Thursday by the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a consultant, noted that other big oil companies, such as Shell and BP, already have sold their stations to distributors. As a result, the OPIS report speculated, there might be fewer petroleum distributors willing or financially able to buy Exxon and Mobil sites.

It wants to unload them as petroleum retailing "continues to be challenging, with reduced (profit) margins and significant competitive growth," Nair said.

A recent OPIS analysis showed that as gasoline prices have shot up, retailers were earning an average 3 cents a gallon of gasoline sold, vs. the typical 13 cents.

Latest government data, based on April numbers, show a bleaker picture: about 2 cents a gallon.

Low profits at a time of record-high prices might seem backward. It happens because gasoline retailing is so competitive — every station's prices are posted in huge numbers. Even as their wholesale prices rise with the jumps in crude oil prices, station operators are reluctant to be first on their corner to go up a penny.

A variety of petroleum marketing studies show drivers will do everything from risky turns across heavy traffic to driving miles out of their way to save a penny a gallon.

If a station chases off customers by raising prices, it has fewer potential buyers for the truly profitable items in its convenience store, such as beer, soft drinks and snacks.

Thus, stations raise prices slowly. (They also lower them slowly when wholesale prices drop, hoping to make up some lost profits.)

Selling the ExxonMobil-owned stations will be done over several years. The change should be largely invisible to fuel customers, Nair said. Stations will display the same signs and sell the same products.

"We are still committed to a strong brand presence in the markets in which we do business and view the distributor method of site operation to be the best platform for the future," she said.

The U.S. average price for gasoline Thursday was a record $4.06, up 0.8 of a cent overnight, according to OPIS data from sales at more than 85,000 stations.