HOUSTON–If you or your customer need to design, say, a diesel engine bearing, a group of tribologists would like to make your job easier. They want to provide a new web site offering software, such as journal bearing and rolling element bearing design programs, together with lubricant data base information to support the design programs. At this week’s Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Annual Meeting in Houston, the computer-aided tribology committee decided to take t...

Houston contract blender and packager Hi-Port Inc. has been purchased by a privately owned investment group that plans to provide the dollars needed for expansion. The purchase was made by John W. Mecom Investment Group, a partnership led by the Mecom family, also of Houston, which has a variety of businesses involved principally in oil and natural gas exploration and production. It already owns a smaller blending and packaging facility in Baton Rouge, La. What we saw in Hi-Port was a company th...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has requested additional information regarding Shell Oil Co.s proposed acquisition of Pennzoil-Quaker State Co., leaving open the possibility of regulators seeking concessions before the deal is completed. Separately, Shell announced plans to form a global lubricants business within two years. The trade commissions request was announced Monday by Pennzoil-Quaker State, which said that the agency wants more information about base oil and passenger car motor oil. ...

Marketers of lubricants made with vegetable oils, agricultural products such as animal fats and oils, or forestry materials, will find a tasty morsel within the 400-plus pages of the Farm Bill. Signed into law May 13 by President George W. Bush, the new law includes a biobased products preference program which obliges all government agencies to purchase biobased products “to the maximum extent practicable.” Products that are covered by the procurement program include lubricants, ink...