John Myers Jr, Business Reporter

Esso service station on Constant Spring Road, Kingston. The 37 retail stores have been sold to Total. - File

There will be no immediate changes at the 37 Esso service stations acquired by Total, says the French company's country manager Luc Maiche.

Instead, the next four months will be concentrated on a review of the existing operations, Maiche told Wednesday Business.

The review will examine the types of arrangements that Esso had with its network of dealers.

Esso Standard Oil S. A. Limited, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, announ-ced that it had sold its Jamaican Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands assets to Total for an undisclosed sum.

Maiche said it would be business as usual in Jamaica until mid-summer, at which time it is expected that the sale agreement will take effect.

"We are buying the assets so there are a lot of things that we will have to discover later on," he said. "But we will keep the same business model, (and) for the dealers, it will not change much."

Number-two slot

Up to last year, Esso's share of the Jamaican gasolene retail market was about 23 per cent and Total's 15 per cent. The deal is expected to place Total in the number-two slot, behind Shell, which is said to have just under 90 stations spread across Jamaica.

Maiche said Tuesday that the acquisition boosts its network to 62 stations. But, still to be determined is whether all the dealers who have contracts with Esso will transfer that arrangement to Total.

Maiche said there were no plans to change the existing arrangement, but added he could not speak conclusively ahead of the review.

Esso Jamaica said Monday it had signed a sale agreement with Total Jamaica Limited for the sale and purchase of all its fuel operations, including both the motor- and aviation-fuel operations and all 37 retail sites in Jamaica.

Up to that point, dealers said they had not been briefed on the deal, nor its implications for individual station operators. But Esso country manager Phillip Calder said all existing contracts would remain in effect until they expired.

The issue comes up for discussion today at the Jamaica Gasolene Retailers' Association meeting.

Total is a leading multinational energy company with 95,000 employees and operations in more than 130 countries. Together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, Total is the fourth-largest publicly-traded integrated oil and gas company in the world.

The ExxonMobil subsidiary said lubricants for all applications would continue to be distributed through its existing distributors.

The acquisition "is very good for us because it allows us to have stations all over the country because presently, we are present in some parts of Kingston or in some parts of Jamaica.. But after we integrate the Esso stations into our network of gas stations,m our customers will find stations everywhere," Maiche said.

"That is the best thing for us and also, we will expect to be more efficient because when you run larger, normally you are able to gain in efficiency."

john.myers@gleanerjm.com