BP has stopped selling gasoline products in North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota because customers in those areas are on the edge of the company’s “supply envelope,” The Forum online reported.
BP stopped selling gas products to those areas at the beginning of the month, and most of the former BP stations have either changed brand names or have gone unbranded, Mike Rud, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Marketers Association, told The Forum.
The cutback affects 34 sites in North Dakota, which combined sold about 35 million gallons of petroleum products annually.
Signs of the North Dakota pullout dated back to September 2001 when Texas-based Tesoro Petroleum Corp. acquired refineries in Salt Lake City and Mandan, N.D., from BP-Amoco. That’s when service station owners decided whether to switch brand names to Tesoro or stick with BP, Rud said.
“They had an option for a few years and now that option is gone,” he said.
