The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Bahamian dealers say they will ultimately have to “wait and see” how they will be affected by the Barbados-based SOL Group’s acquisition of Esso (Bahamas), one retailer telling Tribune Business their contracts were expected to remain the same for the next three years.

The dealer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that while retailers had yet to have a formal meeting with the SOL Group, he had been informed that the existing Esso (Bahamas) management team would remain in place for at least a year to ease the transition, while the contracts with retailers would not be affected for the next three years.

“I understand that the management team will stay the same at least for a year. For the dealers things will stay the same for the next three years, meaning they won’t change the contracts for the next three years. We have not had any formal meeting with them [SOL] as yet,” said the retailer.

Tribune Business was unable to reach Esso (Bahamas) country manager Valentino Hanna for comment.

But Clyde Reshad, the Esso dealer at the Village/Soldier Road roundabout, told Tribune Business: “We’re just in a wait and see mode. At the end of the day we’re in the gas selling business and they are, too. We’re just going to wait and see, and hope it’s a great relationship. They want to make money and we do, too.”

Assessing the petroleum retail market, Mr Rashad said: “Consumers today are more interested in price than product or company. With prices at what they are, we have a large sector of the motoring public who are not brand loyal; they are price loyal.”

Esso’s sale - long expected - marks the third and final global oil multinational to exit its downstream (retail and wholesale) businesses in the Bahamas and wider Caribbean. Shell was the first, via the FOCOL Holdings deal, with Texaco following suit via the Rubis purchase.

The SOL Group, and its SOL Petroleum subsidiary, is headed by Sir Kyffin Simpson, the businessman who holds the Suzuki franchise for the entire Caribbean region via his Simpson Motors business. SOL stands for Simpson Oil Ltd, and its purchase of Esso (Bahamas) is part of a wide-ranging deal that will see the Barbados-based conglomerate snap up ExxonMobil operations in six other Caribbean territories.

SOL Petroleum has extensive Caribbean-wide interests, having acquired Shell’s retail and commercial fuels business in Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, Anguilla, Guyana, Suriname, Belize, St Kitts/Nevis, St Vincent, Grenada, British Virgin Islands, Netherlands Antilles and Dominica. It operates 350 Shell-branded service stations in the Caribbean, plus another 60 under the Sol brand in Haiti, Anguilla, St Kitts, St Maarten and the BVI. SOL Petroleum operates 55 companies in 19 Caribbean territories.

Another Bahamian dealer, Arnold Heastie, head of Heastie’s Service Station on Blue Hill Road and Coconut Grove, told Tribune Business he did not expect any major changes in local operations relative to the takeover.

“We haven’t met with them yet, at least not formally, to see what they’re all about”, Mr Heastie said.