Dealers, already left in disarray with fuel deliveries disrupted by the collapse of the Lindsey Oil Refinery, are furious that they first found out about this week’s announcement of the closure of the Prax-owned site second-hand.
They are also now questioning a letter sent by Harvest Energy last Thursday in which the fuel supplier said it was working closely with third-party suppliers to find “an alternative solution that ensures reliable supply”. It said it planned to update dealers with “a resolution within the next five to seven days”.
Tony Cookson, who runs Lawford Service Station a Total Energies site in Manningtree, on the Essex/Suffolk border with his daughter Harriet, first found out that administrators had given up on finding a buyer, when we contacted him this Tuesday morning.
“I’ve been stunned by the lack of communication from the start. All I want to do is to get out of this contract so that I can move on. At the moment I am chasing my tail getting tankers,” he says.
“I thought the government were going to support the Prax refinery. That is what I was led to believe,” he adds.
Like the other 125 dealer sites which were served by the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Killingholme, North East Lincolnshire, the Cooksons have been left to find their own fuel supplies, which are more expensive.
At the end of last week, Cookson decided to pass on the increased fuel cost to his customers – raising the price of unleaded and diesel by 3p a litre, and super by 5p – and sales are already taking a hit, with weekend fuel volume down 20-25%.
“Some of this might have been because of the bad weather,” says Cookson, “but I would have expected sales to have picked up again on Monday and they didn’t.”
“Because I’ve had to put the price up, the shop has been empty and we are selling nothing. Yesterday we sold just over 9k litres, and normally we would expect 12k or 12.5k. But I had borne the extra cost for too long.”
The damage to the business Cookson believes will be long-term. “We are in a village and you only have to travel three miles up the road to be a lot cheaper, and 10 miles up the road is 10p cheaper at a relatively new EG site.
“These are customers who will not come back once they have found elsewhere. People are creatures of habit and will get used to buying at another site.”
Feeling helpless to the situation Cookson’s daughter Harriet is setting up an action group for dealers to unite, as a backlash to how they have been treated.
Since the story went live with Forecourt Trader last week dealers with around 25 sites between them have come forward join Harriet and set up a WhatsApp group to communicate and back one another. This includes Tom Dant who is pursuing his own legal action to extricate him from operating as a Total Energies dealer.
Tom Dant, managing director of three Gill Marsh Forecourts’ sites in Lincolnshire, first heard about the permanent closure of the Prax refinery while watching last night’s news on television. He says that not being told officially has meant that any chance of a relationship with Harvest Energy has been severed.
“This shows a complete disregard for dealers,” says Dant. ”The administrators are concentrating on getting as much as possible from the assets – including at one point trying to sell us super fuels – and dealers are very low down their priority list.”
He adds: “The relationship is beyond repair. If they had done a deal as soon as the Prax refinery hit problems and tried to help us things could have been different.”
FTI Consulting, which was appointed to assist the liquidator of the Prax Lindsey oil refinery when the High Court appointed the Official Receiver, said that it could not comment. Teneo Financial Advisory, appointed as joint administrators for State Oil Limited, the owner of the Prax Group, also declined to comment.
- To sign up to the dealer support action group contact Harriet Cookson at accounts@lawfordservicestation.co.uk
