EMA Journal • PMAA Journal Fall 2018 • Legal Briefs

by Robert S. Bassman, Partner with Bassman, Mitchell, Alfano and Leiter, Legal Counsel to PMAA PMAA Corporate Silver Partner

“So, they found an office for me,” I told Sof as I was leaving for work. “Thank God!” she replied as I went out the door. (Her mantra for the last several years has been “I married you for better or for worse, but not for lunch.”)

For the last five years or so, I had looked to August 31, 2018, as my last day of work. Our office lease was expiring on that date, and I had no desire to take part in what would be the sixth move in the firm’s 39 ½ years of existence. But since we are the longest-term tenants still in the building (we moved in on St. Patrick’s Day, 2001), our landlords decided that they wanted to move us into a vacant suite next door so they could remodel ours.

As the planning progressed, without much input from me (because, of course, I wasn’t going to be there) an amazing thing happened — on one of the several floor plans sequentially passed around, an extra office appeared with my name on it. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or upset.

When I told that story at the meeting of the Chevron and Texaco Petroleum Marketers Association’s Board of Directors this past summer (the CTPMA’s director had asked if I was retiring), an old friend-client in the room pulled me aside and said, “Bob, that same thing happened to me earlier this year. I was retiring, and we were building a new office building, but my kids and my wife decided to build an office for me.”

To paraphrase Gen. Douglas MacArthur, “Old lawyers never retire, they just fade away.” And retirement can prove problematic. I mean in my case, after 46 years of practicing law, as my curmudgeon-like friend and even longer-term attorney says, “Bob, what are you going to do all day?” I had what I believed were several attractive and productive alternatives, but they apparently will have to wait awhile.

Back in the ’70s, ’80s and into the ’90s, most jobbers’ retirement plans were either to transfer the business to their children or to sell their assets back to their major oil company refiner-supplier. When the majors began to sell off their marketing assets in earnest, that latter option disappeared. A recent Oil Express special report quotes two longtime petroleum marketing finance and sales experts, Mark Radosevich (PetroActive) and John Flippen (PetroCapRE) reflecting on the current state of their and their clients’ business transfer activities. Both echoed the oldest refrain I know of in this area, jobbers are quitting because “the business isn’t fun anymore.” Well, I’m not sure about that. While pressures to get out clearly remain, they are usually countervailed by the very real opportunities and pleasures of being in business. (Mark just sent me photos of a new “gas and grass” station in Colorado Springs.) Motor fuel marketers are, however, finally beginning to feel the competitive fuel pinch felt by their heating oil marketing brethren back in the early ’70s.

When my now-partner, then-new boss Doug Mitchell met with me on my first day at National Oil Jobbers Coucil (NOJC), I had several questions for him. One of those was due to the fact that on the same day I was hired as counsel for the motor fuel side of the business, another attorney, Paul Sternberg, was hired as counsel for the heating oil division. I asked Doug, “But what about those heating oil guys?” He replied, “We have to give them three or four years to get into another line of business.” Almost 45 years later, hundreds of them are still selling home heating fuel.

At a recent industry meeting, the future of liquid fuels was a principal topic. The global warming and carbon reduction push to take the nation away from liquid fuels toward electric vehicles (EVs), compressed natural gas (CNG) and hydrogen was the principal topic. One of the main bones of contention was the government’s “gifts” to EVs (no excise taxes, government subsidies for the vehicles, etc.).

This kind of government support is strangely evocative of the push by public utilities for permission to allow the rate base to pay for the expansion of natural gas pipelines at the expense of heating oil marketers. This began decades ago and continues today. In fact, we had a case for the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association (CEMA) last year attempting to block just such state action.

But the good news (and there’s certainly a lot of it) is that, after 125-plus years of gasoline (and diesel) propelling the nation’s motor vehicles, any change will take a lot of time. It is estimated that by 2050 petroleum fuels will still be the major form of U.S. transportation propulsion.

Nothing is forever. Certainly nothing in business. But, not only do today’s motor fuel jobbers have a right to expect decades more of good business (something very few sellers of any product can rely on), they will always have good dirt to sell donuts and whatever other things a public on wheels demands.

So, I’m not sure exactly when I will retire, but I know it will be well before you quit selling gasoline. Those of you who are reading this column won’t have to place serious worry about your chosen profession for a long time.