Volume 1 Issue 36
SSY Base Oil Shipping Report
September 4, 2018There have not been any particular developments in the different regions around the world. Activity levels remain subdued, and rates are soft all over.-by Adrian Brown
Middle East Lubes Still Promising
September 4, 2018Worries about the Middle East finished lubricants market have dominated recent news headlines, but according to one industry veteran, the outlook for the sector holds promise in the medium term.
Gazprom Posts Strong First Half Sales
September 4, 2018Gazpromneft-Lubricants reported that it sold 319,000 metric tons of base oils and finished lubricants during the first half of 2018, a 20 percent increase from the same period of 2017. Officials attributed the improvement to sales growth in Russia and abroad.
Synthetic Base Stock Supplies Rising
September 4, 2018Global capacities for API Group III base oils, polyalphaolefins and polysobutenes have all increased significantly in the past decade. Lubes'n'Greases newly published 2018 Nonconventional Base Stock Guide provides data on sources for those and four other key types of synthetic base stocks.
From Other Editions of Lube Report
September 4, 2018Briefly Noted
September 4, 2018Italian ship owner Grimaldi Group SpA will install United Kingdom-based Silverstream Technologies proprietary air lubrication technology – which reduces frictional resistance between water and hull via a thin layer of micro-bubbles on a vessels flat bottom – on 12 vessels being built over the next three years. U.S. testing, instrumentation and technical support provider Koehler Instrument Co. signed a distribution and service agreement with German tribological modeling, simulation and analysis company Optimol Instruments Pruftechnik GmbH for its existing SRV greases test system users in North and Central America, as well as some Middle East and South East Asia markets.
Correction
September 4, 2018The Aug. 28 Lube Report EMEA article, Slack Waxes in Demand in Europe, contained an error about the ownership of ExxonMobils refinery in Augusta, Italy. The sale of that refinery to Sonatrach is still pending and is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of 2019. ExxonMobil also stated that only one of four wax trains at its Port-Jerome, France, refinery is operating at lower levels than normal, and that one only a little bit lower.