Number of fuel stations in Germany 1950-2021

Germany houses 14,459 petrol stations. The average annual number of filling stations has fluctuated with a general trend of decline. Figures peaked in 1970, when there were over 46,000 sites. Ever since, numbers have been decreasing, falling below 15,000 petrol stations from 2008 onwards.

Petrol stations in the European Union

Germany has the second highest number of petrol stations of any European country, second only to Italy, which has 21,750 sites. Germany is followed by Turkey, Spain and France. The UK’s petrol stations presented a similar trend to the one observed in Germany, with an overall reduction of nearly 5,000 sites from 2000 to 2019. In 2020, there were roughly 8,400 filling stations in the UK.

Global contrast

The experience of both the UK and Germany are in contrast to that of other parts of the world, with PEMEX gas stations in Mexico nearly doubling the number of available sites from 2004 to 2017. The Mexican state-owned petroleum company recorded approximately 11,600 thousand gas stations across the country in 2017, but has since closed down roughly one third of these.