Senior Editor, Lube Report
Office: +1 (703) 536-0800
George Gill is Lube Report senior editor, joining LNG in 2006. He is responsible for weekly production of the firm’s popular newsletter; he reports and writes news articles and edits stories and columns. He also contributes feature articles for the firm’s monthly magazines.
Prior to LNG, Gill was business editor at the Loudoun Times-Mirror, a weekly newspaper in Leesburg, Va. He wrote business features and news articles, and oversaw production of the newspaper’s business section. Gill holds a BA in English from George Mason University.
ASTM International approved as a standard a new small scale oxidation test that provides more accurate results for biobased greases. The approval culminates a long effort by the Biobased Greases Working Group – a joint effort between The European Lubricating Grease Institute and the National Lubricating Grease Institute.
Afton Chemical posted higher operating profit for its fourth quarter and a decline in its full-year operating profit, and Valvoline reported a decrease in operating income but an increase in sales for its fiscal quarter ending Dec. 31.
Commercial vehicle registrations across the European Union grew 3.2 percent to 2.5 million in 2018, its sixth consecutive year of growth, while passenger car registrations edged up 0.1 percent to almost 15.2 million, the fifth straight year of growth, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.
Kraton Corp. last month lifted its force majeure declaration for its North American tall oil fatty acid and distilled tall oil product lines. The company said it completed restoration of operations for the crude tall oil refinery at its site in Panama City, Florida, which was hit by Hurricane Michael.
Oxea lifted the force majeure declaration for products from its plant in Oberhausen, Germany, where production units are running at normal capacity again following the restoration of synthesis gas production, the company announced Friday. A spokesman confirmed that affected products included two amines and one polyalcohol used in lubricants.
Shell plans to invest $16 million to expand its lubricant blending and packaging plant in Brockville, Canada, according to an Ottawa newspaper’s report.
Zschimmer & Schwarz announced that it will open a plant in Ivey, Georgia this year to make esters to be used in the blending of finished lubricants.
Artificial intelligence may conjure dystopian images from the Terminator movies, but an oil analysis company has used it to boot up its human employees’ productivity.
Venezuela completed an initial payment to defunct Canadian gold miner Crystallex International last week as part of a $1.2 billion amended settlement reached in September. That followed a United States district court’s approval in August of Crystallex’s request to seize control of shares from a U.S. subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. that owns Citgo.
Quick lube operators cited Shell’s Pennzoil brand and Valvoline as their best-selling motor oils, National Oil & Lube News reported in its Fast Lube Operators Survey.
A HollyFrontier subsidiary will acquire Sonneborn from private equity firm One Equity Partners for $655 million cash under an agreement announced yesterday. HollyFrontier officials said the addition of Sonneborn’s specialty products is another step in diversifying its product mix with a shift toward finished products.
Average retail prices for synthetic motor oils in this year’s fourth quarter were up slightly from a year earlier and were substantially lower at the largest big box retailer, compared to the top five automotive parts stores, according to the latest Retail Lubricant Price Tracker data from Petroleum Trends International.
Summit Lubricants installed a new 50,000 pound grease reactor at its plant in Batavia, New York, last week to increase manufacturing capacity and speed and to gain more control over quality.
The average price this year for an oil change using five quarts of semi-synthetic oil rose 11.4 percent to just under $48 this year, while the cost for one with full synthetic oil dipped to just over $74, according to results from National Oil & Lube News’ survey of quick-lube operators.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Vessel General Permit created a global standard that has drastically affected the marine lubes industry by requiring environmentally acceptable lubricants, a United Kingdom-based industry insider told a conference in Chicago last month.
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