Valero is intensifying its rebranding of Texaco forecourts, with over 200 sites now wearing the US oil firm’s new livery, and more than 50 changing brand in the past three months.
Valero began adorning UK canopies and pole signs with its own name in late 2023, first rolling it out at three Ascona forecourts in the vicinity of the Pembroke refinery.
Valero, which operates 14 refineries and generated $116bn of revenue in 2025, has remained tight-lipped about the project’s motivation, but the Texan company has been selling its own fuel under a rival oil brand’s name since it acquired the Pembroke refinery from Chevron for £447m in 2011.
As well as a key UK refinery, that deal also gave Valero the supply contracts for around 1,000 petrol stations. Those petrol stations, however, wore Texaco liveries, a Chevron brand that has since been used by Valero under licence.
The UK rebranding project is also believed to be to part of a wider global push for the Valero brand, with the firm having retail presences in North America, the UK and Ireland, and Latin America.
Valero performed a similar but larger-scale project in the US when it phased out the Diamond Shamrock name from around 2,900 US gas stations after it merged with Ultramar Diamond Shamrock in 2001.
The company has also undertaken an equivalent initiative with the Beacon brand, while the 300 or so forecourts it supplies in Mexico, which it entered in 2020, trade under Valero canopies.
While Valero supplies all Texaco petrol stations in the UK it doesn’t own any forecourts here, so cannot introduce a nationwide rebrand in one fell swoop, instead having to negotiate with dealers, potentially alongside fuel-supply contract renewals, and Chevron.
The scope of the project and its timescale are therefore difficult to pin down, with Valero only telling Forecourt Trader it would be “accelerating the addition of Valero-branded sites across its network”, and that it has “ambitious plans for further brand growth”.
The firm didn’t say whether the rebrand means Texaco forecourts will eventually become a thing of the past in the UK, but with more than 50 sites adoptiong the new name in the past three months, against 81 in the two years between October 2023 and 2025, momentum behind project Valero is clearly building.
