Adrian Brown is away. His column will reappear next week.

A California agency is working to adopt regulatory language on a law prohibiting the sale of any engine oil deemed obsolete by the American Petroleum Institute. As requested by lubricant manufacturers, regulators are considering exceptions for valid uses for obsolete oils. The new law, which was known as assembly bill 808 before it went into effect in January 2016, prohibits the sale of any obsolete engine oil and requires product labels to clearly indicate its compliance with an API, ACEA or or...

Repairs have begun at the Pearl gas-to-liquids refinery in Ras Laffan, Qatar, and operators have started to resume production – a process that could last at least a few months, Shell said. The Pearl refinery includes one of the worlds largest base oil plants, a facility with capacity to make 1.4 million metric tons per year of API Group II and III stocks. Disruptions in its operation since December played a large role in erasing a several-year glut in the global Group III market. Ramp-up o...

The Standards Organization of Nigeria arrested a lubricant counterfeiting syndicate in a town near the countrys capital city of Abuja, an agency spokesman told Lube Report. Osita Aboloma, director-general of the agency, had previously explained to local media that the syndicate operated by using discarded lubricant containers for packaging fake and substandard lubricants, which it sold to lubricant consumers. The agency is one of the regulatory agencies for the lubricant industry in Nigeria. Sig...

Less than half of do-it-yourself consumers report purchasing motor oil on promotion at auto specialty retailers in the United States, according to a recent study conducted by NPD Group. At the same time, promotional activity for motor oil was up in 2016, with 14 percent more in-store circular motor oil advertisements compared to 2015. The biggest surprise for me was that a lower than expected number of consumers reported purchasing motor oil on promotion, Nathan Shipley, director and automotive ...