[appreciatorBus]

Another insightful way to look at this is to include gasoline spot market data as a comparison.

I kept hearing about the vast profits of gas stations, so one day I started a spreadsheet of my gas purchases and kept it going over 10 years. When I tried lining up the graph of what I have actually paid per litre with a spot market graph, after converting for currency, units, taxes etc, they were almost identical, indicating extremely slim margins, if any. Yes there were differences, places in the graph where stations had likely made money on my purchase, but there were just as many where they likely lost money, unless I also stepped inside to but a snack.

[jacquesm]

You are correct. Non-chain gas stations often make only as little as one or two cents per liter, and that's before you look at pump maintenance, inspections, periodical tank replacements/upgrades/liners and other costs.

Manned stations really need that shop otherwise they'd go bankrupt.

Chains make a bit more money but mostly because they can play longer games with stock and options on much larger volume buys.

Source: former gas station owner.

[spockz]

And yet I see in earnings that companies like BP and Shell make record profits over increased gas prices. How come that they do profit but the station holders not? Are shell/bp increasing the margin harder and eating the station’s lunch?

[kitd]

The majors that do upstream (taking it out of the ground) as well as downstream (refining and selling it on the forecourt or wholesale) make their profits on the oil markets.

When crude is high, it's upstream that earns the income. When it's low, it's selling it to the customer.

Fun fact: when I worked at BP, the product with the highest margin on the forecourts was the Wild Bean coffee.

[qingcharles]

It's funny to think that BP is a coffee shop with a side-business in petrol.

McDonald's makes its largest margins from the soft drinks, according to an ex's brother who worked in their HQ. From a $1 drink, the cup, straw and lid is 5 cents, and the liquid is 3 cents.

[vkou]

Opening a gas station is a lot easier than acquiring mineral rights, drilling an oil well, refining that oil, and getting it to market. Oh, and your customers can't just drive across the street to your competitor because they are 1c/litre cheaper.

There's naturally going to be a lot more friction and a lot less pop-up competition and therefore a lot more margin on the supply side of things.

The station has no power to raise margin - they are in tight competition with every other low-margin station around them. The suppliers, on the other hand... If they invested into wells that aren't affected by the war 10 years ago, and their competitors haven't (or have, but can't supply all the world's oil needs), and there's a global supply shortage - they have lots of room to raise prices.

[badpun]

I think majority of the profits come from extracting the oil from the ground, much less from refining (more competetive - everyone can just build more refineries if margins become high enough), and the least from retail (gas stations).

[Ajedi32]

Yep. In short, this is an oil shortage, not a gas station shortage.

[semi-extrinsic]

The people who drill a hole in the ground and then a valuable product literally flows out of it, make more profits when prices of that product go up, compared to the refiners and resellers of the valuable product. I don't think this is mysterious?

Jokes aside, the upstream side has costs (both capex and opex) which are predominantly independent of the actual oil price, but income which is tied to it.

It's like with NVIDIA: their cost of producing a B200 is not directly related to the cost of (and demand for) Claude Code, but what they can charge for a B200 is.

[gostsamo]

Reuters had a material on the topic. The big producers have trading desks that can optimise based on spot prices and redirect tankers as needed.

[zipy124]

A lot of their record earnings come from trading revenues as well, as they all effectively have in-house trading desks to hedge risk.

Not nearly as much profit as Vitol made but they make large sums too.

[mschuster91]

> How come that they do profit but the station holders not? Are shell/bp increasing the margin harder and eating the station’s lunch?

Here in Germany, many stations aren't even involved in selling the gas. That's what that magical line "Verkauf von Kraft- und Schmierstoffen im Namen der <Firma>" on the receipt says - the fuel and oil are on paper/for accounting purposes sold by the oil company whose brand is on the flag.

Independent gas stations (e.g. in Bavaria, the Allguth chain) exist, and they buy, store, distribute and sell their fuel on their own, but in the end everyone is bound to the same few refineries - virtually all (!) of Eastern Germany, Berlin, the Berlin airport and Western Poland for example depend on the PCK refinery complex in Schwedt [1], in Bavaria 2/3rd of the market is supplied by the two Bayernoil refineries in Vohburg and Neustadt [2], the rest by Gunvor (ex-Esso/Exxonmobil) [3].

No matter if you are an independent or brand-owned gas station... there is about zero competition on the supply side. It's all the same gas and diesel, the only practical difference is the additives for the ultra-high-octane fuel. And that in turn means very little competition at the pump, and owners of independent gas stations being hit the hardest.

There's a reason why Allguth stations more resemble a 24/7 supermarket, restaurant and beer hall than a gas station.

Oh and the supply side competition is pretty bad even for refineries. Refineries are fitted to refine only a specific composition of oil - that's the distinctions sweet/sour and light/heavy. For that reason, the US can't process a bunch of its own oil [4], which means the US is actually dependent on Canada and Mexico [5] to meet its oil product demand. A refinery which, like almost all are, is tuned to a specific country's (or, worse, a specific oil field in a specific country) composition is in a real bind, should the supply chain ever get screwed up. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was bad enough, the Iran war was what could very well be the final, fatal blow to many a refinery, especially in Asia.

Retrofits are possible to allow a refinery for light sweet oil to process heavy sour oil (i.e. add a sulphur removal stage to deal with that, and a cracking stage to deal with heavier molecules), and it is possible for a refinery that is tooled for heavy sour oil to run on light sweet oil without modification - but it is seriously throwing wrenches into the financials, and that's a blocking issue in our money driven world [6].

[1] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/pck-raffi... / https://archive.ph/qtvd8

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayernoil

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunvor_Raffinerie_Ingolstadt

[4] https://www.afpm.org/newsroom/blog/how-much-oil-does-united-...

[5] https://atlasinstitute.org/heavy-oil-heavy-dependence-how-us...

[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2026/04/05/debunking-a-...

[theazureguy]

Good shout. DESNZ publishes weekly wholesale rack prices and they are OGL, so there is no barrier there. The interesting bit isn't just showing the gap; it's the propagation lag. Wholesale spikes and pump prices follow within days. Wholesale drops and pump prices take their time. That asymmetry is basically what I built this dataset to measure. Adding the wholesale series as a reference line is on the list.

[christina97]

You’re absolutely right!