Shell Oil Co. andFlint Hills Resourcesannounced April 23 that they have entered a definitive agreement for Shell to sell its 50-percent stake in Excel Paralubes to a Flint Hills Resources LLC subsidiary. Flint Hills Resources is a wholly-owned subsidiary of oil and chemical conglomerate Koch Industries Inc. Koch, a privately-held company headquartered in Wichita, Kan., is engaged in production and trading of oil and gas products and chemicals, as well as minerals, securities and finance. It has ...

ConocoPhillips Co. and S-Oil Corp. announced Monday that they have entered an exclusive agreement for ConocoPhillips to distributethe Korean refiner’s Group III base oilsin the United States. Through the arrangement, S-Oil hopes to muscle in on a business that has been dominated by another South Korean refiner, SK Corp. Lithcon Petroleum USA, a Houston company that markets SK’s Group IIIbase oils in the United States, says it sold 30 million gallons of Group III in 2002, accounting f...

American owners of Mercedes-Benz cars were awarded a $32 million settlement this month on a complaint that their engines may have sustained early wear because they were not advised to use synthetic motor oil. The class action settlement, approved April 9 by a U.S. District Court judge in Philadelphia, calls for Mercedes-Benz USA to mail vouchers for a free oil change to more than 350,000 owners and lessees of cars from the 1998 through 2001 model years. In addition, the company commits to cover ...

The industrial lubricants sector was good to both Lubrizol Corp. and Milacron Inc. during the first quarter of 2003. In Lubrizols case, a 38 percent jump in revenue from its Fluid Technologies for Industry segment fueled an 18 percent improvement in the companys consolidated earnings, compared to the first quarter of 2002. Milacron, meanwhile, enjoyed a 12 percent increase in sales revenue from its industrial fluids business. Lubrizol reported Thursday that its overall consolidated earnings for ...