Exxon Says It’ll Close Gas Outlets : Energy: The oil company says it will withdraw from retail operations in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties. Dealers say they saw it coming.

Confirming the fears of its Southern California dealers, Exxon Co. U.S.A. said Tuesday that it will cease its retail gasoline operations in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties.

The announcement means that the familiar Exxon sign will disappear from 156 stations by Nov. 30.

Houston-based Exxon said the move was part of “an ongoing effort to reduce costs and to improve the overall profitability of Exxon’s marketing operations.”

The lack of a local refinery had been considered by many industry observers to be a significant disadvantage to Exxon in the highly competitive Southern California market.

“Exxon’s presence in Southern California hasn’t made sense for some time,” noted Dick Wilson, executive director of the Southern California Service Station Assn., which represents most brand-name dealers.

In these difficult days for the big oil companies, many have been restructuring their retail operations. Shell Oil Co., for example, recently withdrew from Oregon and Idaho but bought 90 Mobil stations in the Houston area. Unocal Corp. has withdrawn from Oregon and Washington and will close 300 marketing outlets in California.

San Francisco-based Chevron Corp. announced Tuesday that it will buy 23 of the Exxon stations. Arco officials said they will look into what opportunities the move might present later in the week. Mobil Corp., which dealers said was also discussing possible acquisitions of some Exxon stations, could not be reached for comment.

Exxon said it “has contracted with or is actively negotiating” with other major oil companies over the sale of about one-fourth of the 156 stations.

“We still have a pretty good presence in California, even after this,” noted Les Rogers, an Exxon spokesman. Most of the 570 remaining Exxon stations in California are concentrated in the Sacramento and San Francisco areas, near Exxon’s Benicia refinery.

Chevron declined to disclose the terms of its deal with Exxon, but said it will supply gasoline for the newly acquired stations from its El Segundo refinery.

George Babikian, president of Arco Products Co., confirmed that Atlantic Richfield Co. will discuss buying some of Exxon’s stations. But he said that buying more stations may not make sense for Arco.

“We’ve got saturation coverage now, 26%” of the Southern California market, Babikian said. Adding more stations between existing Arco dealers might harm their own dealers, he said.

Babikian saw Exxon’s chances of selling the stations as generally good, however.

“If they sell them piecemeal they won’t have any problem,” he said. “They have some terrific locations.”

Wilson said most Exxon dealers are lessees of land owned by Exxon.

According to Exxon, any contracts for sale “will require the acquiring oil company to offer franchises to the incumbent dealers.” Dealers at stations not sold will be given the option of buying their stations themselves. Wilson, of the dealers’ group, said that Exxon would hold a meeting Thursday with the affected dealers.

Exxon’s Rogers added that the varying amounts of damage suffered by eight Exxon stations in the recent riots in the Los Angeles area “was not part of the decision” to withdraw from the three counties.

Southern California Exxon dealers became concerned about a possible sale in recent months when Exxon raised its wholesale gasoline prices to them, increased station rental fees, suspended ordinary maintenance and began conducting the environmental tests necessary to sell any potentially contaminated real estate, such as a service station.

Exxon’s 149 stations in the greater Los Angeles area--slightly fewer than the number that will be sold--accounted for just 3.4% of that market in the most recent census by industry analyst Trilby Lundberg.

Meanwhile, Exxon also said Tuesday that, effective Sept. 1, it will no longer accept the Exxon credit card for sales made at Exxon stations in the states of California, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. It will continue to accept sales made on American Express, Discover, Visa and MasterCard.