Volume 3 Issue 99

ExxonMobil Hikes Motor Oil Prices

ExxonMobil Lubricants and Petroleum Specialties next week will raise prices on passenger car motor oils and other consumer automotive lubricants by as much as 56 cents per gallon, according to a letter sent to lube distributors last month. The company told Lube Report yesterday that the action has nothing to do with a recent complaint by independent lubricant manufacturers that it had employed predatory pricing. Officials with the Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association welcomed ExxonMob...

Technical Managers: Well-paid and Worried

Laboratory, R&D and technical managers who work for U.S. lubricant manufacturing companies say they earn as much as $175,000 a year — and as little as $30,000. The average compensation for these key industry employees is $91,000, according to the 2004 Lubricants Industry Salary Survey conducted by Lubes’n’Greases magazine. This is only 5.8 percent higher than the reported average of $86,000 in 2002, the last time the magazine conducted its biennial survey. Comparing the re...

Quick Lubes Question GF-4 Oil Quality

The engine sequence test used to measure motor oil’s contribution to passenger car fuel economy is a cause for “extreme concern,” says a letter from the fast-lube industry. It asks the oil industry for assurance that new GF-4 engine oils passing the test will perform as expected. The letter followed on the heels of an Oct. 20 Lube Report article which asked, “Why would two distinct GF-4 passenger car motor oils — which earlier had passed the rigorous Sequence VIB (&...

GTL Will Plug Wax Gap, Kline Says

HOUSTON – The trend toward higher quality lubricant base stocks will accelerate the shutdown of petroleum wax plants in the next few years, enough to create a shortfall of 2 billion pounds for the global wax industry a decade from now, a consultant told an industry conference here Nov. 11. The good news, according to Kline and Co.s Geeta Agashe, is that the shortage will be filled by gas-to-liquids waxes. Agashe told the National Petrochemical and Refiners Associations Lubricant and Waxes...