Adrian Brown is away. His column will reappear in next week’s issue.

Base oil and additive plants along Texas Gulf Coast stand idle as Hurricane Harvey brought record flooding to one of the worlds highest concentrations of raw material supply for the lubricant industry. With water levels still rising, companies said it was too soon to say when facilities would reopen. The industry awaited damage assessments as the rain spread eastward from Houston, raising the threat of similar impacts for more plants near the Texas-Louisiana border. It will take some time to bri...

Green Oils and Lubes, part of a United Arab Emirates-based group of companies, plans to build a base oil rerefinery in Oltenita, Romania, the company told Lube Report. The $53 million rerefining project will have capacity to process 72,000 metric tons of waste oils annually. The European Bank for Development and Reconstruction and a commercial bank will finance $30 million of the total value of the project. We are now in the engineering phase – more precisely, detail design – with th...

U.S. demand for industrial lubricants is expected to remain stagnant through 2021, with process oils and metalworking fluids the only parts of the segment predicted to grow, according to Kline & Co. The industrial segment is the largest portion of U.S. lubricant demand, accounting for between 1.2 billion gallons and 1.3 billion gallons, or 45 percent, of the market. Kline forecasts it to grow at a modest 0.1 percent compounded annual rate over the next four years, Project Manager Sushmita D...

Ingevity Corp. will acquire Georgia-Pacifics pine chemicals business – including tall oil fatty acids used in metalworking fluids and corrosion inhibitors – for $315 million in cash. Subject to conditions and regulatory approvals, the transaction is expected to close in late 2017. According to Ingevitys presentation on the acquisition, it will include Georgia-Pacifics site in Crossett, Arkansas, which employs about 70 people. The acquisition will include pine chemicals-related assets...

Nynas naphthenic business unit reported an increase in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to 142 million Swedish krona ($17.8 million) for its second quarter, rebounding from a 131 million krona loss in 2016s second quarter. The business unit, which primarily supplies naphthenic base oils, reported a 33.3 percent jump in net sales to 2 billion krona from 1.5 billion krona in the previous years second quarter. Sales volumes in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa ...