> How come that they do profit but the station holders not? Are shell/bp increasing the margin harder and eating the station’s lunch?

Here in Germany, many stations aren't even involved in selling the gas. That's what that magical line "Verkauf von Kraft- und Schmierstoffen im Namen der <Firma>" on the receipt says - the fuel and oil are on paper/for accounting purposes sold by the oil company whose brand is on the flag.

Independent gas stations (e.g. in Bavaria, the Allguth chain) exist, and they buy, store, distribute and sell their fuel on their own, but in the end everyone is bound to the same few refineries - virtually all (!) of Eastern Germany, Berlin, the Berlin airport and Western Poland for example depend on the PCK refinery complex in Schwedt [1], in Bavaria 2/3rd of the market is supplied by the two Bayernoil refineries in Vohburg and Neustadt [2], the rest by Gunvor (ex-Esso/Exxonmobil) [3].

No matter if you are an independent or brand-owned gas station... there is about zero competition on the supply side. It's all the same gas and diesel, the only practical difference is the additives for the ultra-high-octane fuel. And that in turn means very little competition at the pump, and owners of independent gas stations being hit the hardest.

There's a reason why Allguth stations more resemble a 24/7 supermarket, restaurant and beer hall than a gas station.

Oh and the supply side competition is pretty bad even for refineries. Refineries are fitted to refine only a specific composition of oil - that's the distinctions sweet/sour and light/heavy. For that reason, the US can't process a bunch of its own oil [4], which means the US is actually dependent on Canada and Mexico [5] to meet its oil product demand. A refinery which, like almost all are, is tuned to a specific country's (or, worse, a specific oil field in a specific country) composition is in a real bind, should the supply chain ever get screwed up. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was bad enough, the Iran war was what could very well be the final, fatal blow to many a refinery, especially in Asia.

Retrofits are possible to allow a refinery for light sweet oil to process heavy sour oil (i.e. add a sulphur removal stage to deal with that, and a cracking stage to deal with heavier molecules), and it is possible for a refinery that is tooled for heavy sour oil to run on light sweet oil without modification - but it is seriously throwing wrenches into the financials, and that's a blocking issue in our money driven world [6].

[1] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/pck-raffi... / https://archive.ph/qtvd8

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayernoil

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunvor_Raffinerie_Ingolstadt

[4] https://www.afpm.org/newsroom/blog/how-much-oil-does-united-...

[5] https://atlasinstitute.org/heavy-oil-heavy-dependence-how-us...

[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2026/04/05/debunking-a-...

I tracked 7,700 UK petrol stations every 10 minutes for 3 months