Murphy USA plans to buy land from Wal-Mart

The actual land where all those Murphy USA gas stations in the parking lots of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) Supercenters may now be owned by Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE: MUR) instead of Wal-Mart if the oil company gets its way. Murphy USA wants to buy those parcels of land from Wal-Mart for up to a reported $315 million over the course of 2007 to 2008, according to the oil company.

Is Wal-Mart selling the smaller gas station-type parcels for a nice infusion of cash? Who knows -- and customers probably won't be able to tell if anything's changed as the parcels are transferred from Wal-Mart to Murphy over the next 18 months or so. It probably all comes down to money: this is a nice payday for Wal-Mart and the company is not going to see any negative effects from actually selling those rented parcels to Murphy instead of leasing them as it does now.

Murphy USA stated that it planned to close up to 47 locations and book second-quarter impairment and restoration costs of about $18 million. Instead, it will concentrate mostly on "partnered" locations such as those in the parking lots of the ubiquitous Wal-Mart Supercenter near you. Now, I wonder it Wal-Mart could sell of pieces of its parking lot areas to other complementary vendors and companies and build some cash piles that way? Nah -- that probably won't fly. But hey, Wal-Mart's annual shareholder meeting happens on the first of June -- do I head a shareholder proposal about this? Anyone?