Shell and Bogdan Auto, one of the biggest car dealers in Ukraine, signed a lube supply contract. Under the deal, Shell Oil Products Ukraine will supply Bogdan Auto more than 300,000 liters of its flagship motor oil brand Helix during the next three years. Beginning in June 2013, all of Bogdan Autos service stations began using Shell lubricants for their customers routine car maintenance checkups, according to the oil majors recent announcement. Shells 180,000 metric tons per year lubricants ble...

Lubcon Nigeria Ltd. has produced Rugged Elite 5W-40, a synthetic motor oil that claims to be the first synthetic lubricant manufactured within the African country. As far as we know, all the 100 percent synthetic [lubricants] sold in Nigeria are imported, Taiye Williams, managing director of Lubcon, told Lube Report. Rugged Elite will therefore be the first indigenous 100 percent synthetic motor oil. It is made strictly with API Group III base oil. The Lubricants Producer Association of Nigeri...

Distributor Oman Oil Marketing is negotiating to acquire a 40 percent shareholding in blender Lubechem International Industry, of the United Arab Emirates, for 1.5 million dirham (U.S. $408,000). According to a July 21 Oman Oil filing with the Muscat Securities Market, the primary business purpose of Lubechem is the manufacturing and blending of greases, lubricants and chemicals, and this acquisition is expected to enhance the ability of [Oman Oil Marketing Co.] in its lubricants vertical suppl...

SINGAPORE – In this period of unprecedented change in the base stock industry, base stock optimization is essential to cut costs and complexity. ExxonMobil is growing its API Group II and reducing its Group I to align its slates for the future. Base stocks are just a tool for lubricant formulators, X B Cox, ExxonMobils global base stocks and specialties planning manager, told the ICIS Asian Base Oils & Lubricants Conference here in late June. We live in a period of unprecedented chan...

Elevance Renewable Sciences and Wilmar International Ltd.s biorefinery in Indonesia began shipping commercial products, including chemicals used in lubricants and base stocks. The joint venture manufacturing facility in Gresik, Indonesia, produces specialty chemicals, including multifunctional esters such as 9-decenoic methyl ester, bio-based alpha and internal olefins such as decene, and a mixture of oleochemicals. The plant has a capacity of 180,000 metric tons per year (about 400 million pou...

Motor oil labeling guidelines have been updated once again, this time as the result of a unanimous vote at a National Conference on Weights and Measures meeting last week, which moved to require distributors of bulk engine oil to provide written documentation on the quality of oil on each delivery to oil change facilities effective Jan. 1, 2014. This comes in the form of amendments to Handbook 130, the guidebook for metrology and motor fuel standards developed by the NCWM and published by the N...