K.Venkateshwar.Rao

Lub-rref (Bangladesh) Ltd. will open a 50,000 metric tons per year API Group II rerefinery by March 2019 with the help of American used oil regeneration technology provider Chemical Engineering Partners. The plant will be the country’s largest base oil source and its first to make Group II. The Bangladeshi rerefiner and lubricants supplier earlier this month contracted CEP to design the rerefinery on a 50,000-square meter site along the Karnaphuli River in the Julda district near Chittagong. Lub-rref will license  CEP ’s vacuum distillation and hydrotreating technology at the plant, which will have capacity to convert around 70,000 tons of spent oil into around 50,000 t/y of Group II base oils. Observers have pegged Bangladesh’s annual finished lubricant demand at around 75,000 to 80,000 tons. Collectively, five suppliers – Mobil, Bangladesh Petroleum, Total, Shell and Castrol – command 63 percent of the market. Lub-rref expects the new project to help it increase its lub...

In the year since its January 2016 initial public offering, Pakistan’s Hi-Tech Lubricants Ltd. has invested around 1.2 billion rupees (U.S. $11.4 million) of the funds it raised, mostly on its foray into the fuel retail and service center businesses, which it said will be a boon to its lubricants sales. “To increase infiltration into the market, we are venturing into the [fuel marketing] business,” CEO Hassan Tahir told Lube Report Asia. “With licenses already received, we have plans to open 300 fuel stations nationwide by the end of 2020.” Hi-Tech expects fuels to make up around 45 percent of its total revenue within a year after its first sale, which it forecasts to occur in the last quarter of 2017 or first quarter of 2018. By its fourth year of operations, Hi-Tech said revenue from its fuels sales alone could be up to 250 percent higher than its current income. Hi-Tech will market mostly motor spirit and high-speed diesel products. Fuel retail will help Hi-Tech grow its lub...

A March turnaround at the only Pakistan refinery with a base oil unit may cause a temporary shortage in the company's supply of lubricant feedstock. Pakistan’s second-largest fuels refinery, operated by privately owned National Refinery Ltd., will be shut for at least 15 days starting March 10 for upgrades and maintenance. NRL will revamp the Karachi refinery’s crude oil processing unit, which has capacity to produce more than 2 million metric tons per year of various fuels, along with its two base stock trains, which can produce a combined 183,000 t/y of API Group I base oils. “The upgrade project of the refinery’s diesel hydrodesulfurization, isomerization and [base oil] units will affect the production of diesel and petrol as well as lubes for some time, but [NRL] will cover up the shortfall with increased production on completion of the upgrade projects,” a senior planning engineer at NRL told Lube Report Asia. The official added that the project is intended to ...

BY K. VENKATESHWAR RAO • JANUARY 24, 2017 Standard Greases & Specialties Ltd. had intended to gain control of the Andrew Yule Group-managed Tide Water Oil Ltd. upon becoming its largest shareholder last year, but to date it has cooperated with existing management to focus on the growth of the company. In September 2015, Mumbai-based Standard Greases, along with Janus Consolidated Finance Pvt., Alpha TC Holdings Pte., and Tata Capital Growth Fund, made an open offer to pay up to Rs 377 crore (Rs 3.77 billion or U.S. $57 million) for a controlling stake of 226,512 shares of Tide Water stock. Standard Greases later increased the per-share price of its offer, boosting the overall value of the bid to Rs 397 crore. When the offer closed on Dec. 30, 2015, Standard Greases’ and Janus’ combined shares amounted to 29.38 percent, making the company Tide Water’s largest shareholder. Based on Standard Greases’ 27.69 percent of shares, and Janus’ 1.69 percent, Tide Water’s board decided ...

India Shifting Toward Group II BY K. VENKATESHWAR RAO • APRIL 12, 2016 MUMBAI – India’s lubricant market may be lagging developed markets in terms of the quality of finished products and the base stocks that it uses, but it has begun a significant shift toward API Group II stocks, an official from Kline & Co. consultants told an industry meeting here last week. Project Manager Anuj Kumar Singh told the ICIS Indian Base Oils & Lubricants Conference that India’s shift will be driven by the same forces that affected Europe, North America and Japan – tighter air emissions regulations, fuel economy mandates and lube performance demands by automakers – along with attractive pricing for Group II. “This will create greater demand for Group II and other high quality base stocks and limit the market for Group I,” Kumar said. India is the world’s third-largest lubricant using country, having consumed 2.3 million metric tons in 2015, Kline estimates. That volume, which includes...

BY K. VENKATESHWAR RAO • APRIL 19, 2016 MUMBAI – India’s lubricant market attracts much attention because of its trends for size and quality. But several of its neighbors – Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal – are also growing at attractive rates, an industry insider told a conference here this month. At the ICIS India Base Oils & Lubricants Conference on April 5, Gulf Oil Lubricants India Ltd. Managing Director Ravi Chawla said lube demand in all three countries is growing due to economic expansion, growing vehicle parcs and investment in infrastructure. Expansion of the country’s power grid is expected to help drive growth in Bangladesh’s lubricant market. Bangladesh is the biggest of the three markets, with annual lube demand of 73,000 metric tons, Gulf estimates. Lubricant consumption typically tracks economic activity, and some of the things that make the country an attractive lube market are the trends of its economy. It is among the “Next 11” group of countries identi...

MUMBAI – India’s decision to jump straight from Bharat Stage IV to BS VI automobile emissions regulations will accelerate its need for higher quality engine oils, even as relaxed fuel standards create a tougher operating environment. India has lagged significantly behind emissions standards of developed nations. The current standard for most of the country is BS III, equivalent to the Euro III standard that the European Union adopted a decade ago. The E.U. has since moved onto Euro VI. BS IV will go into effect next year, and India had planned to implement BS V in 2019 and BS VI in 2021. Then, in January, Roads Minister Nitin Gadkari announced that the country would skip BS V and move up the implementation date for BS VI to 2020. As equivalent standards have done in other countries, BS VI is expected to force car and truck manufacturers in India to employ a variety of emissions control technologies – diesel particulate filters, exhaust gas recirculation, selective catalytic red...

Like passenger cars and trucks, motorcycles in Asia are facing growing pressure for fuel economy and emissions controls, and this, combined with consumer demands, should raise the quality of engine oils used in two-wheelers, an Infineum official told an industry conference here last month. Speaking at the ICIS Indian Base Oils & Lubricants Conference, Ong Keat Lee, a technologist with the United Kingdom-based lubricant additive supplier, cited India as an example of Asian nations where legislation affecting motorcycle emissions looms. Regulations and demands of manufacturers and consumers will raise the quality of motorcycle oils in Asia, Infineum says. Bharat Stage IV emissions limits – equivalent to Euro IV regulations in the European Union – are currently in effect for two- and three-wheel vehicles. India, which is now the biggest and fastest-growing motorcycle market, recently announced that the country will skip BS V limits and proceed directly to BS VI for two- an...

BP announced Thursday that it had sold an 11.5 percent share of Castrol India, leaving it with a 59.5 percent stake. The United Kingdom-based oil major is selling assets to raise cash but said it wants to retain control of the Indian lubricant supplier. “BP remains committed to India, and we wish to continue to grow our businesses here, progressing our upstream natural gas developments as well as our downstream opportunities, including lubricants,” BP Group CEO Bob Dudley said. In a press release BP said the stock shares that it sold were purchased by a range of investors in India and other countries. The company did not disclose the amount raised by the sale, but United States-based news website BidnessEtc reported the proceeds to be $300 million and said this amounted to a 5.3 percent discount from the stock’s trading price the previous day. Before the deal, 29 percent of Castrol India was held by a variety of investors. BP emphasized that the sell-off of stock shares will ...

India’s Tide Water Oil conceded a more substantial title to its largest shareholder, naming Standard Greases & Specialties Pvt. “joint-promoter” alongside state-owned Andrew Yule Group. The reclassification may boost morale, but isn’t expected to affect management, according to company officials. In an Aug. 11 regulatory filing on national stock exchanges, Tide Water Oil (India) Ltd.’s board of directors announced that the board had agreed to reclassify the shareholding statuses of Standard Greases and one of its subsidiaries, Janus Consolidated Finance Pvt. – with the latter being bumped from “public shareholder” to “part of promoter group.” In the same filing, the Kolkata-based lubricants supplier also noted that director Shri Kallol Datta had resigned. An official told Lube Report Asia that Datta resigned in conjunction with his retirement from Andrew Yule and had not been asked to stepped down. In Sept. 2015, Mumbai-based Standard Greases, in cooperation with Janus, Al...