BP opens Mexico’s first foreign-owned retail station

Super-major BP launched its fuel retail business in the Mexican market with the opening of its first service station in the country on Thursday.

Located in the outskirts of Mexico City, the station is just one of 200 that BP plans to open in the country in 2017, and the first of 1,500 over the next five years.

The company’s refuelling areas will offer BP-brand fuels and include the company’s Active technology. The stations will also feature retail stores.

The Mexico City station is not only BP’s first in the country, but also Mexico’s first foreign-owned retail station.

“We are delighted to be the first international oil company serving Mexican consumers in what is the sixth-largest consumer gasoline and diesel market globally,” BP’s CEO of downstream business, Tufan Erginbilgic, said in a statement.

BP follows in the steps of Hidrosina, which became the country’s first private Mexican fuel retailer to open a service station outside the Pemex brand in June 2016.

These changes have been made possible by the passing of energy reform legislation in 2013 and 2014, which established a framework for the liberalisation of the domestic oil and gas industry.

Though the deregulation of the Mexican fuel retail sector was initially scheduled to take place on January 1, 2017, President Enrique Peña Nieto expedited it, opening the market to private players an entire year early.