The ACCC has approved Ampol’s acquisition of EG Australia, clearing the largest consolidation in the Australian fuel retail market in years. The approval, announced on 3 June, is conditional on Ampol divesting 41 sites, which it has agreed to sell to Metro Petroleum under a binding agreement. Ampol expects to complete the acquisition on 30 June.
The seller of EG Australia will receive net cash of approximately $1.115 billion. Ampol has said it will cash settle the scrip component of the purchase price, citing its balance sheet position.
What the deal brings together
Ampol operates around 612 retail sites across two brands and was already EG Australia’s exclusive wholesale fuel supplier. EG Australia operates around 500 sites nationally. The combined network makes Ampol a substantially larger retail operator, with the company framing the acquisition as strengthening its retail footprint and customer offer.
Ampol CEO Matt Halliday described the transaction as a major step in delivering the company’s strategy, strengthening the retail network and enhancing its segmented customer offer.
The path through the regulator
The deal has taken close to a year to clear. Ampol first announced the agreement in August 2025. Under Australia’s new mandatory merger regime, which took effect on 1 January 2026, the ACCC referred the transaction to a Phase 2 review in January, citing concerns that combining two major fuel retailers could substantially lessen competition in numerous local markets and in the metropolitan areas of Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney.
The competition remedy grew through negotiation. Ampol initially offered to divest 19 sites. The ACCC rejected that as insufficient. The package rose to 37 sites in April, then to 41 in the final offer, with the regulator examining both local market overlaps and metropolitan-wide effects before granting clearance.
The Metro Petroleum dimension
The 41 divested sites are being sold as a package to Metro Petroleum. The structure is notable. Rather than the divested sites being scattered to multiple buyers, a single independent-aligned operator picks up a coordinated network. The remedy is designed to preserve competition in the local markets where the ACCC identified overlap, by transferring sites to an operator positioned to compete rather than retiring them from the competitive pool.
For the broader market, the approval confirms the direction of travel. The major networks are consolidating, the regulator is using divestment remedies to maintain local competition, and independent operators remain central to how the ACCC assesses whether competition is preserved.
What happens next
Completion is expected on 30 June. From that point, the integration of the EG Australia network into Ampol begins, and the 41 divested sites transfer to Metro Petroleum. The practical effects on wholesale supply relationships, branding, and local pricing will become clearer over the months that follow.
The deal reshapes the upper tier of the Australian fuel retail market. How it flows through to competition at the local level is the part worth watching.