Its not been a good week for shipping. The United States remains a horrible place to have a ship open with very little spot business taking place, and Asia is beginning to taper off. Europe has seen an occasional burst of activity, but only on a few routes. U.S. Gulf The situation is dire for those ship owners who have open tonnage in the U.S. Gulf, and sadly there are plenty of examples of ships that are fully open with absolutely nothing to do. Of all the routes, transatlantic eastbound is the...

Straining under the workload of developing two new engine oil categories – PC-11 for heavy-duty diesel oils and GF-6 for gasoline-fueled passenger cars – oil, additive and testing companies want to see the deadlines eased. At their June 12 meeting, the developers of the new heavy-duty category reviewed the status of the engine sequence tests that are needed for PC-11. The American Petroleum Institute’s New Category Development Team, which is chaired by Dan Arcy of Shell, had ea...

Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LP plans to expand normal alpha olefin production capacity at its Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, Texas, by 100,000 metric tons per year. The company said Monday it received approval for the project from its board of directors and obtained the necessary environmental permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, with construction completion anticipated in July 2015. This investment decision reflects Chevron Phillips Chemicals strategy to leverage North Am...

Kazakhstans government introduced a six-month ban effective July 1 on export of lubricants and other petrochemicals as a measure to stop short supplies and high prices for such products, according to a government decree. Signed by Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Masimov June 27, the decree bans exports of petrochemicals such as kerosene, gas oil, diesel fuel and motor oils. It is aimed to prevent critical shortages of these products and their price hikes, said the state regulation published on t...

Q8Oils spent 80,000 (U.S. $136,000) to convert its Leeds, United Kingdom, location from lubricants blending to filling and storage. The Antwerp, Belgium-based company discontinued blending at Leeds and reengineered the plant. That involved upgrading bulk storage tanks and tank gauging equipment, and installing new pipework and a new filling line, as well as converting vessels that were originally used for blending lubricants into additional storage tanks. The facility will now serve as a storage...

Of almost 253 million passenger cars on the road in the United States, the average vehicle age is 11.4 years, an IHS Automotive study found. The survey also found that that scrap rates are down and new vehicle registrations are up, indicating that the largest growth volumes can be found in cars less than 6 and more than 12 years old. Based on a snapshot of vehicles in operation on Jan. 1, IHS found that almost 252.7 million light vehicles were on the road in the U.S., an increase of over 3.7 mil...