Royal Dutch Shell said this week that it will continue operating the base oil plant at its Pulau Bukom, Singapore, refinery until July 2022 as announced late last year. The base oil plant will close as part of a plan, announced earlier last year, to significantly reduce the crude oil throughput of the overall refinery. As reported in the May 14 issue of Lube Report Asia, Shell recently accelerated the crude throughput reduction from late 2023 to July of this year. Last week a Shell spokesman said he did not know if that would change the timeline for the 386,000 metric tons per year API Group I base oil plant.