The UK’s Office of Fair Trading has cleared Tesco’s acquisition of 21 former BP/ Safeway petrol stations from rival Wm Morrison.


The OFT said it had decided, on the information currently available to it, not to refer the merger to The Competition Commission under the provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002.


Tesco will now convert the stores to its Express convenience format. The deal was originally announced on 31st August 2005 and involved an offer for 30 petrol stations. As stated at the time, BP retained pre-emption rights on 12 sites and has since exercised those rights on nine of them.