The Reporter (Addis Ababa)
Hayal Alemayehu
15 September 2007
Crown Central Petroleum, a US-based oil company, is finalizing registration and relevant prerequisites required to enter Ethiopia's fuel and lubricant distribution market, sources told The Reporter.
The company, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, will start fuel and lubricant distributing operation either by acquiring some of existing fuel stations in the country or by constructing new ones, according to sources.
An independent refiner and marketer of petroleum products, Crown Central Petroleum Corporation operates two refineries, both located in Texas, with rated capacities of 100,000 and 50,000 barrels per day.
Crown's principal business is the wholesale and retail sale of its products in the United States, with approximately 435 gasoline stations and stores in operation, according to information posted at the corporation's web site.
The company will be engaged in fuel and lubricant distributions in Ethiopia, while it particularly aims at supplying the whole market with its own products, according to sources.
"The company will be participating at international tenders which is being issued by the Ethiopian Petroleum Enterprise on annual or semi-annual basis to select an oil company, which, if happened to win the bid, will supply the country's fuel consumption," the sources said.
The Ethiopian petroleum Enterprise is the responsible government agency appointed to purchase and wholesale the country's fuel consumption to fuel distributing companies operating in the country.
Presently, Shell Ethiopia, Total Ethiopia, National Oil Corporation (NOC), Yetebaberut Beherawi petroleum (YBP) and Kobil Ethiopia are the active operators in the country's fuel distribution market. The Sudan-based Nile Petroleum is also finalizing preparation to start operation.
Crown Central Petroleum, which currently is refining and marketing petroleum products in the US, is destined to become the latest entrant to Ethiopia's oil distribution market.
The company, which had reportedly been experiencing a fiscal deficit in the 1990s, has as well have its operation in the US dwindling in 2006. During the summer of that year, many of its stations began to disappear, according to some reports.
"All but about 20 of Crown's stations in the US were re-branded to either Texaco, Chevron Corporation or Royal Dutch Shell gas stations," according to Baltimore Sun, a Texas-based newspaper. This was because the company sold these stations about two years earlier, as reported in the newspaper. The company, however, is currently reviving, according to some reports.
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