Market Topics

Base Oil Price Report

May 19, 2004

Sunoco said it is continuing efforts to repair a deasphalting unit damaged by a March 23 fire at its Tulsa, Okla., refinery. The company declined to d ...

After more than a year of often leisurely debate over technical specifications, the American Petroleum Institute’s Lubricants Committee is lungi ...

Ethyl Unveils New Name

May 12, 2004

Ethyl Corp. announced May 5 that it plans to rename its Petroleum Additives business Afton Chemical Corp. following a restructuring that it hopes to h ...

Citgo is moving its headquarters to Houston, and most of the home offices lube-related jobs are going with it. The company, which for 30 years has bee ...

Tribospec Corp. is getting back to its roots, announcing recently that it has entered an agreement to represent Sunoco branded lubricants throughout C ...

Base Oil Price Report

May 12, 2004

Several more base oil suppliers joined the round of price hikes begun last week. Sellers and buyers agreed that the market was ripe for its third incr ...

The quick-lube market in the United States may seem fairly saturated, but that has not kept a few chains from growing at healthy clips. Among chains w ...

The Ukrainian government said recently that it is preparing to sell a controlling share in Azmol, one of the largest lubricant suppliers in Eastern Eu ...

Ethyl Corp., Quaker Chemical Corp. and the industrial fluids business of Milacron all recorded sales surges for the first quarter of 2004. Profitabili ...

ExxonMobil Chemical says it is upgrading its Beaumont, Texas, polyalphaolefins plant to produce additional PAO products it calls “Group IV-plus. ...

British ester manufacturer Esterchem Ltd. announced last week that it has completed an expansion that has boosted its capacity by 30 percent to 14,000 ...

Base Oil Price Report

May 5, 2004

Valeros Paulsboro, N.J. base oil refinery has been shut down while the company brings up a new low-sulfur gasoline unit. ExxonMobil, Motiva, ConocoPhi ...

It has taken Simons Petroleum Inc. more than half a century and a lot of organic growth to become one of the biggest oil jobbers in the United States. ...

BP announced last week that it intends to close its 7,000 barrel-per-day Coryton base oil plant in Essex, U.K., by the end of 2005 to allow its refine ...

The calendar year started off on a good note for two lubricant industry heavies. Lubrizol Corp. reported last week that it had a profit of $37.5 milli ...

Akzo Nobel announced Monday that it has agreed to sell its Phosphorus Chemicals business to private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings LLC for Euro 230 m ...

Base Oil Price Report

April 28, 2004

Flint Hills Resources has begun posting prices for its Group II base oils and says it is expanding the number of customers with which it contracts. We ...

On Friday the American Petroleum Institute’s Lubricants Committee met in telephone conference to discuss the results of its ballot on how and wh ...

This time Lubrizol reeled in a big one. After a series ofsmaller acquisitions over the past few years, the worlds biggest supplier of lubricant additi ...

The Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association warned members this week that the Mexican government is auditing lubricant and base oil imports fr ...