PHOENIX-In a transaction worth an estimated $33 million, 22 gas station and convenience store sites in the area are under contract to be sold to Canadian convenience store retailer, Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., which intends to re-brand them as Circle K stores selling Shell gas.

The sites are being sold by Shell Oil Products US of Houston. All are currently branded as Texaco and Shell stations.

Couche-Tard, based in Laval, Quebec, will buy the land and buildings for 20 properties and assume long-term leases on two others. The sites are scattered across the metropolitan area, mostly suburban shopping center locations, although one is 60 miles north of the city on the Apache reservation in Camp Verde.

The all-cash transaction is sitting at the title company and under environmental review. The sale is expected to close in late November, says Jerry Mason, a CB Richard Ellis Inc. broker in Phoenix. He and CBRE's Nikki Myle are sitting in for Shell Oil in the deal while Couche-Tard is representing itself.

"We expect the vast majority of the sites in the transaction to be just fine" in that title and environmental review process, Mason tells GlobeSt.com. The sites are "all good locations and a few great locations," he says, declining to single out any specific stores as particularly notable. "I wouldn't want to characterize any as better than others."

The two leased sites are the Camp Verde store, owned by the Apache tribe, and one in Scottsdale. In both cases, Shell's name is on the leases.

All 22 sites will be operated by Couche-Tard and sell fuel under the Shell brand. Other than the re-branding, Mason was not aware of any expansions or renovations that would be conducted at the sites. Circle K already has a sizable presence in Arizona, with more than 500 stores statewide.

Couche-Tard, however, entered the local market for the first time with its acquisitions of the Circle K chain in December 2003 when it paid $803.8 million for the stores. The Canadian company is now the fourth-largest North American operator of convenience stores, with a combined network of 4,898 stores nationwide, most of which include gas stations.