Luberef, the Saudi Arabian base oil company, announced that it has completed a long-awaited upgrade and expansion of its base oil plant in Yanbu and that API Group II stocks are now being shipped from the facility.

Luberef initially announced the expansion in 2012 and originally aimed to complete it by 2015. The project suffered several delays, and in the second half of last year officials said the expansion would be completed in December.

The plant is the first in the Middle East to make large amounts of Group II. The announcement did not list numbers, but Luberef has previously released information indicating the plant would have capacity of 708,000 metric tons per year of Group II.

The company said in an e-mailed statement that its first export cargo has finished loading and is on its way to customers in India.

Sabic Buys into Clariant

Saudi Arabian chemicals producer Sabic bought a 24.99 percent stake in Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant. The sale put an end to activist investor White Tales hold over the company, which had previously shut down a $20 billion merger with U.S. chemicals company Huntsman.

Sabic said it had no plans to fully take over Clariant, reported Reuters, but the acquisition of White Tales and other investor 40 Norths stake leaves Sabic as the largest shareholder.

Gulf Petrochem Group Rebrands to GP Global

United Arab Emirates-based Gulf Petrochem has renamed itself GP Global, the company said in a statement. GP Global produces and trades base oil, lubricants and grease, as well as fuel oil, made from used lubricant and waste oil at its 72,000 metric ton per year plant in Sharjah and industrial and automotive grease and lubricants, and rubber process oils at its 80 million liter plant in Mumbai.

EALs Under the Microscope

Norwegian verification company DNV GL initiated a joint development project with a group of Scandinavian and Swiss marine insurers to test the part played by environmentally acceptable lubricants in stern tube bearing failures. The uptake of these lubricants, in response to tightening marine regulations in 2013, has coincided with a rise in bearing failures.

Speaking to LubesnGreases, Oystein Asheim Alnes, principle engineer for DNV GL, said that the company did not have any technical reasons for conducting any detailed studies of [EALs] at the time of their introduction back in 2014. They were not common in the maritime industry.

ECHA Puts Lube Additives on Watch

The European Chemicals Agency has added new items to its candidate list of substances of very high concern. The list includes the reaction products of 1,3,4-thiadiazolidine-2,5-dithione, formaldehyde and 4-heptylphenol, branched and linear (RP-HP), used as additives in lubricants and greases.

Bilbao Bagged

Bureau Veritas, the global testing, inspection and certification company, acquired a majority shareholding in Lubrication Management SL, a Spanish oil analysis firm.

Lubrication Management, a unit of a non-profit research and development center IK4-Tekniker, is specialized in wind turbine oil, transformer oil and grease analysis.

The company offers lubricants testing, consulting on lubrication management and fault diagnosis services from its lab near Bilbao, which will become the center for Bureau Veritas oil condition monitoring activities in Europe.