Benz Oil, of Milwaukee, Wis., announced recently that it has acquired metalworking fluid blender Nocco Oil Products Inc. The deal expands product offerings from Benz, which has blended and marketed primarily industrial and construction lubricants, as well automotive oils. Its most significant in that it expands the types of products we sell, Benz President Dixon W. Benz said, adding that customers of both companies will now have a wider array of products to choose. This is important in todays bu...

U.S. lubricant sales volumes for the third quarter of 2002 barely improved from the same period a year earlier, and remained down from several years ago, according to the latest report from the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. The new Quarterly Lubricant Sales Survey, released last week, states that sales during the third quarter of 2002 were 0.9 percent higher than during the same period of 2001, thanks to a 15.4 percent jump in sales of process oils. The rest of the industrial ...

LONDON — What kinds of engine oils will be made when Gas-to-Liquid base oils appear? And can anything be done to widen the use of Group I base stocks, which for 10 years have been losing market share to Group II and Group III? Last week here, the world’s largest base oil refiner sketched a two-pronged strategy for its base stock slate which addressed both of those questions. ExxonMobil has launched a Group I base stock with a viscosity index of 105 — dubbed “Group I+̶...