The oil giant is reviewing the future of its non-British service stations, workers at the company's Irish subsidiary have been informed.

Staff have been told that Texaco is reviewing its petrol retailing operations in the Benelux region and this strategic review will also have implications for Texaco's business in Ireland.

A Texaco spokesman said the company does not comment on internal reviews, but Texaco's recent change of direction in Britain suggests the review will eventually lead to the sale of Texaco's company-owned Irish forecourts, which are run by retailers.

Most of these forecourts are in Dublin and in the capital's hinterland, making them potentially attractive properties in the event of a sale.

Texaco has already sold nearly all of its companyowned filling stations in Britain. The sell-off of Texaco's British service station network began last year with the disposal of 118 companyowned service stations to supermarket group Somerfield.

Under the terms of that deal, Texaco continued to supply fuel to the forecourts, and they remained branded as Texaco outlets, but the forecourt convenience stores were rebranded as Somerfield shops.

About 160 British Texaco sites have been sold in total in the past year, and only 12 company-owned and operated sites remain in the company's British network. Texaco is now focusing in that market on wholesaling to a network of 1,100 service stations.

Texaco has been in Ireland since 1924, when it entered the market as the GalenaSignal Oil Company (of Ireland). Ultimately a subsidiary of American giant Chevron Texaco, Texaco Ireland has a 15% share of the Irish petrol market and about 40 employees.

The company sells directly to 227 branded stations and to another 122 service stations through a network of authorised distributors. It reported a pre-tax loss of 4.4m in 2004, on turnover of 997m, compared with a pretax profit of 13m the previous year.

Tightening forecourt margins have been driving a shift out of the downstream retail business to the more lucrative upstream wholesaling business.

Shell sold its Irish retailing business to the Topaz consortium led by boutique finance house Ion Equity last year. Statoil revealed last week that it is set to sell its Irish retail business, which includes both petrol retailing and home heating and light industrial fuel distribution businesses.