Arco stations for sale as BP plans to leave Southland Oil giant BP will begin pulling out of Southern California next month as it steps up efforts to sell its sprawling Carson refinery and local Arco gasoline operations and lets leases expire on franchised Arco stations. BP has told about 100 station operators that have Arco franchises in the Southland that its leases on the sites will begin expiring in April. The property owner, Thrifty Oil Co. of Santa Fe Springs, has contracted with Texas refiner Tesoro Corp. to operate those sites. As a result, the familiar red, white and blue Arco signs at those 100 stations will be replaced over the next two years by those of Tesoro's USA Gasoline brand. Separately, BP is "actively marketing" the 630-acre Carson refinery and other local gasoline operations, including service stations owned by BP and operated under the Arco name, said Scott Dean, a BP spokesman based in Chicago. Last year, the company said that it had hoped to sell those operations and its refinery in Texas City, Texas, by the end of 2012 as it refocuses on cheaper sources of crude oil and raises money to pay for the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil leak. At the Carson refinery, about 1,200 employees and 500 contractors process 265,000 barrels of oil a day into gasoline, diesel and other products, supplying about 25% of Los Angeles' gasoline. Although BP is leaving Southern California, the future owner of the refinery and service stations may want to keep the Arco and AM/PM convenience store brands, Dean said. "The Arco brand is not going away," he said. There are about 1,200 Arcos on the West Coast and the vast majority are in Southern California. Experts differed on what the changes would mean for consumers. Bob van der Valk, a fuel prices specialist, said he expected new operators wouldn't be interested in continuing Arco's historic market approach of posting the lowest prices in the region. "As BP continues to get rid of a lot of its assets, you are going to see prices rise," he said. But Charles Langley, with the Utility Consumers' Action Network in San Diego, said it was too soon to tell if changing brands would lead to changing gasoline prices. "What Southern California needs is more stations and more competition to help bring down prices," he said. BP's move to let Arco leases expire "came as a shock to all of the dealers," said Baker Alloush, 37, a Corona resident and franchisee with Arco stations in Los Angeles and Redondo Beach. Alloush said he borrowed heavily two years ago to remodel the service stations, something he never would have done if he knew BP was going to leave the Southern California market. "This is going to be devastating to a lot of people," he said. Alloush and others said that they initially hoped they could continue running the stations as Tesoro franchisees. But they say they have been told that they might be able to work at the stations as employees. BP spokesman Dean said the company is "sympathetic, but this is completely out of our control.... We have never owned those stations. Tesoro officials were unavailable for comment.