With more than 50 years spent serving the people of Guam, Mobil Oil Guam Inc. has a long and storied history of helping to keep Guam moving, both through its fuel services and its reinvestment into the island. In addition to paying approximately $7.5 million in taxes annually, the fuel provider has committed more than $100,000 to the University of Guam and various other educational institutions around the island. Mobil Oil Guam President Charles E. Ewart says the company is pushing in a more driver-centric direction, with a much higher emphasis on customer comfort and convenience.

“In the past five years or so, we’ve undergone a lot of change, driven by external factors,” Ewart says, “and it’s really only been in the past 12 to 24 months that we’ve been able to remove ourselves from the internal focus and put the focus back on our customers. So now you’ll see attendants in our forecourts, which probably hasn’t happened for the past five or so years. We’ve put squeegees back on the forecourts so we can clean people’s windshields or they can clean their own. We’ve changed the design for our air hoses so you no longer need to go inside and hand over your license to get the attachment. Clips on the pump handles for hands-free pumping, brighter LED canopy lighting for safety … it’s little things that make the consumer experience easier and better, but they pave the way for bigger things that people will become aware of in the fullness of time.”

Ewart says that the ongoing canopy replacement project for Mobil stations around the island is part of a much larger campaign by the fuel provider to create a lighter, safer, cleaner and more convenient experience for its customers.

However, in spite of all the visible upgrades to Mobil’s service and stations, he adds that the biggest accomplishment for Mobil this year is one that most people don’t see: the complete replacement of the pipeline between Mobil’s terminal and the Port Authority’s Golf Pier.

Because the pipeline must be constantly active and was impossible to work on during incoming tanker shipments, Ewart says Mobil coordinated with the port and its contractors to tackle the daunting task between monthly inbound shipments and twice-monthly local outbound shipments. Working in coordination, they were able to replace each line individually — one for motor fuel, one for diesel and one for aviation fuel — without any safety incidents or impact on supply.

“Those are the sorts of things the general public doesn’t see, but it was a huge accomplishment for us,” Ewart says, “And we thank the Port Authority because they [were patient] with us through the timeline changes as we tried to work around our shipping schedules and the typhoon.”

Ultimately, Ewart says that all of Mobil’s recent upgrades are for the sake of its most important shareholders: its customers.

“I don’t think many people in Guam see us as the local oil company, but that’s who we are and we’re very conscious internally that people that come to our sites are essentially our owners,” he says. “So when we do things, we don’t do them by half measures. We do have the backing of a large organization, so we might be a little slower to commit to things, but when we do commit, we do them properly. So consumers have the confidence of one of the largest organizations in the world behind everything we do. From the canopy replacement project through to our fuel quality and the reliability of supply, you’ve got that confidence that behind everything we do, there are some of the brightest minds in the world making sure it happens properly.”

The Sinajana Mobil station has undergone a canopy replacement, a project Mobil Oil Guam has been working on among all its stations to enhance lighting and safety.