Another largely unexciting week. The U.S. market is mostly unchanged, as is the market in Asia. European coastal routes picked up a bit, whereas deep-sea is lethargic. U.S. Gulf of Mexico It is still the case that there are prompt open ships in the U.S. Gulf, but it is also a fact that there are alterative escape routes, which means that rates do not really remain under sustained pressure for long. Transatlantic eastbound has certainly recorded reductions of around $5 per ton compared to the pr...

U.S. lubricants and chemicals producer Ashland Inc. and Russias TNK-BP signed a five-year agreement to distribute Valvoline passenger car products in Russia, both companies said last week. Financial terms were not disclosed. While the deal focuses on supplying passenger car motor oils, it includes transmission oils, brake fluids, car and engine care products and coolants, Jennifer Knoblach, Ashlands EMEA communications manager, told Lube Report. Valvoline can rely on an extensive network of faci...

Bullseye Motor Oil can cause significant damage to car engines, the Petroleum Quality Institute of America said, issuing its first-ever Dont Buy alert for a motor oil. PQIA, based in Metuchen, N.J., tests and reports on the quality of lubricants in the U.S. market. Over the past year, PQIA has purchased multiple samples of Bullseye Motor Oil from convenience stores in Michigan, Ohio and New Jersey. Tests consistently found serious issues with the oil. After each test, PQIA issued consumer alert...

A massive fire that took six hours to control devastated a 30,000 square foot lubricants warehouse at R.D. Holder Oil Co. in Springfield, Ohio, April 19. The Pike Township Fire Department first received a call at 10:41 a.m. on Thursday about a fuel truck on fire at R.D. Holder Oil, said Jacob King, fire chief for Wright Patterson Air Force Base, whose firefighters responded to the incident. In all, about 85 firefighters from 35 fire departments, along with officials from 50 agencies were on the...

Chevron marketer Crevier Lubricants opened a new 62,000 square foot plant in Canadas Quebec province April 19. The plant in Longueil, Quebec, doubles the floor space of its facilities and increases its warehousing capacity to accommodate more than 3.5 million liters of bulk and packaged lubricants, primarily motor oils and hydraulic oils, Crevier said in a prepared statement. The company said it can now more effectively operate its packaging line as well as package private brands. Crevier sai...

Ashland reported its Consumer Markets (Valvoline) business posted operating income of $57 million for the quarter ending March 31, down 11 percent from $64 million in the year-earlier period, while sales reached $520 million, up 6 percent from the year before. Parent company Ashland said total lubricant volume sold was 40.7 million gallons for the quarter, down 9 percent from the year-earlier quarter. The quarter ending March 31 is the second quarter of Ashlands fiscal year. Although Ashland Con...

Oxea, Eastman and Troy have implemented price hikes on several types of chemicals used in lubricants. Oberhausen, Germany-based Oxea increased list and off-list prices for two carboxylic acids effective by $50 to $150 per metric ton in Europe, by 10 cents per pound in North America and by $70 to $200/t in the rest of the world. Carboxylic acids are used in synthetic lubricants. Oxea also raised prices on neopentylglycol by 5 cents per pound in North America, and on both NPG and trimethylolprop...