What a gas!

Last month, members of the national business community faced the tricky question of what to wear for the festive opening of a gas station. Total Liban, the Lebanese unit of French oil multinational Total, put the question on the agenda by inaugurating, with speeches and circumstance, a re-developed flagship station on one of Beirut’s main traffic arteries, the six-lane urban highway connecting Downtown Beirut to Dora. Total Liban’s senior management told Executive on the sidelines of the opening party that the company achieves a daily sales volume of 20,000 liters at the outlet, dubbed Medawar Station after the surrounding neighborhood. The station generates this volume from an average of 1,500 customers a day, but Total aims to boost the station’s fuel throughput by 30 percent based on the location’s full redevelopment into a station that features eight gas pumps, an automated car wash, a modern automotive servicing area, an ATM