Volume 17 Issue 52

SSY Base Oil Shipping Report

Adrian Brown is away this week and next week. His column will reappear in the Jan. 10 issue.

Top Lube Report Stories of 2017

The year that is winding down has been eventful for the global lubricants industry – featuring a rocky road for lubricant standards in North America and big changes in the make-up of several markets. Once again there were significant delays to a major engine oil specification upgrade, this time ILSACs GF-6 passenger car category. Two Middle Eastern oil companies entered the ranks of base oil marketers, and U.S. refiners began producing Group III base stocks for the first time in years. The...

Harveys Toll: $200M in Lost Base Oil

How deeply did Hurricane Harvey bite into U.S. base oil supply? Domestic production in September plunged by 1.8 million barrels after the late-August storm savaged the U.S. Gulf Coast, according to data from the federal Energy Information Administration. Lube Report estimates that outages in September erased more than $200 million in revenue from the order books of affected refiners – a sales opportunity that vanished forever with the unmade material. The countrys total output of base oils...

Prepare Now for Marpol Sulfur Cuts

The International Maritime Organizations marine pollution regulations will cut the global fuel sulfur cap for oceangoing vessels to 0.5 percent by weight starting on Jan. 1, 2020 – in just two years. But lube oil formulators should be preparing now for this dramatic change, said Dick Wolpert, marine product line manager with Chevron Oronite, at the ICIS Pan American Base Oils and Lubricants Conference last month. Marine engine oils face long lead times for product development with extensiv...

ATF Labels to Gain Clarity in Some States Jan. 1

Labels on automatic transmission fluid should be clearer starting Jan. 1 in the 19 states that automatically codify the latest version of the National Conference on Weights and Measures NIST Handbook 130. According to the 2018 version of NIST Handbook 130, the states in question are: Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. I...

Briefly Noted

ExxonMobil Corp. will combine its refining and marketing operations into a single company, ExxonMobil Fuels & Lubricants Co., in the first quarter of 2018. Bryan Milton, current president of ExxonMobil Fuels, Lubricants & Specialties Marketing Co., was appointed to become president of the combined division effective Jan. 1. Elco Corp. parent Detrex and global specialty chemicals company Italmatch Chemicals completed their merger agreement, under which Italmatch will pay $27 per Detrex share, or nearly $46 million cash, to create a new subsidiary.

Editor's Letter

Beginning next week, LubesnGreases is switching to a regional format for Lube Report – and launching a third online newsletter. The new newsletter is Lube Report EMEA, which will focus on the lubricants industry in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and be published each Tuesday. Lube Report is being renamed Lube Report Americas and will continue to be published on Wednesdays.

We will continue to publish Lube Report Asia, but its publication day is switching to Friday. Subscriptions to the newsletters will continue to be free.

In making this change, we are expanding our coverage of the industry and at the same time providing a geographic focus which we believe readers will appreciate, Publisher Howard Briskin said.