Volume 12 Issue 29

SSY Base Oil Shipping Report

The Americas look muted with a lot of ships seemingly immobile for days on end. Europe is a bit sparkier with some useful domestic business and some deep-sea fixing to help shift tonnage. Asia has also seen worse periods than this and vessels are getting fixed. U.S. Gulf of Mexico Some trade lanes out of the U.S. Gulf are truly barren and ships that get stuck there can wait days or even weeks before securing some kind of outbound cargo. U.S. Gulf to the Caribbean is one of those routes now, and...

Packed House Hears of PC-11 Progress

The next heavy-duty engine oil upgrade, known as PC-11, took center stage June 26 during ASTM Committee D-2’s technical week in San Francisco. The New Category Development Team (NCDT) is making progress in creating the oil that will be needed for heavy-duty diesels produced starting in 2016. The NCDT is actually developing two oils. The first is a fully backwards-compatible product with traditional viscometrics, such as SAE 15W-40. The second will be a lower-viscosity oil providing fuel e...

Safety-Kleen Plant Starts Up

Safety-Kleen has begun blending engine oils at its new $15 million East Chicago, Ind., facility, which was completed in late June. Dave Sprinkle, Safety-Kleens executive vice president for oil rerefining, said the new facility will have an initial blending capacity of 20 million gallons annually, with the option to increase production by expanding work shifts in the future. Initial production of blended products began July 2. We are blending Ecopower motor oil and other passenger car motor oil...

SK: Optimistic about Group III

SINGAPORE – The worlds largest single-unit API Group III base oil plant, SK Lubricants 26,000 barrel per day joint venture with JX Energy, started up in May. But net production only increased by 10,000 b/d, as SKs oldest Group III plant went off line. Steve H. Kim, manager of base oil business development at Seoul, Korea-based SK Lubricants, updated the ICIS Asian Base Oils & Lubricants Conference here on June 28 about his companys Group III expansion plans. The SK Lubricants-JX Ene...

Valvoline Sees a Lively Market

The traditional base oil market has become pretty lively in the last few years, and volatility seems to be the new norm, according to an Ashland Consumer Markets executive. In fact, global procurement is becoming increasingly dynamic, making life interesting for Neal Zuzik, director of global procurement for Ashland Consumer Markets, which owns the Valvoline brand. Zuzik, who has worldwide responsibility for sourcing base oils, additives and packaging, recently sat down with Lube Report to dis...

Castrol Indias Q2 profit drops

Castrol India reported that its second quarter income fell to 1.21 billion rupees (U.S. $21.9 million), a decrease of 15.16 percent from last years second quarter earnings of Rs 1.42 billion. Net sales in the quarter rose 7.72 percent to Rs 8.54 billion from last years Rs 7.93 billion for the same period. Company officials noted that despite an extremely difficult market environment, sales grew by 8 percent on the back of a volume growth of 5 percent. Ravi Kirpalani, Castrol Indias automotiv...

St. Petersburgs Motor Oil Mess

Shelves loaded with several thousands tons of packaged motor oil collapsed in a St. Petersburg, Russia, warehouse on July 15, causing an oil spill about the size of a soccer field. The packaged motor oil is owned by the Moscow-based X5 Retail Group, Russias largest food retailer in terms of sales. The company operates several retail formats: the soft discounter chain under the Pyaterochka brand, the supermarket chain under the Perekrestok brand, the hypermarket chain under the Karusel brand an...