Marketers say stores failed after BP supplied Costco, others with cheap gas

摘要

BP sold high-priced stations and c-store franchises to marketers in the Midwest and then undercut them on the street by supplying fuel to unbranded chains like Costco, according to retailers now suing the major in federal court in Illinois.rnRetailers Robert luckiness and Nupresh Desai say BP priced aggressively at its company-op stations in the Chicago market in order to grow its volumes before selling them. The sites also benefited from a "never run out" policy that BP adopted for some stations after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in September 2005. The units received preferential treatment over other outlets when it came to allocations, which gave them another artificial boost in volume and made them more attractive to purchases.