Encouraged by robust demand and fat margins, U.S. refiners wrenched open the spigots and streamed 31 million barrels of base oil in this year’s first half. Despite outages and setbacks that dented operating rates at a number of plants, total base oil production in the first six months of 2011 was almost 6 percent higher than the same period last year, according to data released Aug. 31 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The improvement was seen most emphatically on the naphthe...

Brenntag said Friday it will expand into lubricant additives and base oils by acquiring fellow specialty chemical distributor Multisol Group. Terms were not disclosed. In the deal, Brenntag will acquire 100 percent of Multisols shares. The transaction will be financed by a combination of available liquidity and additional debt under Brenntags existing financing arrangements. Pending merger approvals, the deal is expected to close in 2011s fourth quarter. In a Sept. 2 media presentation, Brennta...

Croda Inc. opened a facility to make esters for lubricants at its Atlas Point manufacturing site in Delaware. The project will increase the companys U.S. capacity for all esters by 15 percent. According to Croda, the site will now be able to manufacture synthetic esters of sufficient quality to be used in high-performance automotive and industrial lubricants. Demand for such lubes is growing, driven by increasing market demands for improvements in fuel economy and sustainability. Some examples...

Russian lubricants marketer Gazprom Neft-SM will acquire Select Oil, an independent lubricant blender based in Fryazino, in the Moscow oblast, for an undisclosed price. The deal is expected to be approved during the Gazprom Neft board of directors meeting scheduled for Sept. 9, the company said last week. The blender will be operated by Gazprom Neft-SM, the oil majors lubes arm. Part of the companys development strategy is the acquisition of low-tonnage blending and filling capacity assets, com...

If anything, trade diminished even further in Europe over the past week, with the exception of the route to Asia. The Americas has stabilized, but activity was sluggish due to the Labor Day holiday, while Asia saw owners trying to hang on to rates in the face of a weak week. U.S. Gulf In the U.S. Gulf-to-Caribbean market, there is some prompt space available, after which it is tight until the first half of October, but only a few small parcels were quoted over the last few days, and certainly n...