K.Venkateshwar.Rao

Hyrax to Open Sri Lanka Blending Plant BY K. VENKATESHWAR RAO Malaysian company  Hyrax Oil  plans to open a lubricant blending plant next week at an oil terminal in Muthurajawela, Sri Lanka. “The plant was built through a strategic collaboration with the  Ceylon Petroleum Corp.  under a build, operate, and transfer agreement, where both parties forged a supply agreement for increased collaboration and partnership,” Hyrax Oil Media Advisor Dhanushka Jayawardene told Lube Report. “This is the second lubricant blending plant for Hyrax Oil, [with] the first being in Johannesburg, South Africa.” The 43,000 metric tons per year lubricant blending plant was to be built with an investment of U.S. $30 million on a 2.2 hectare site, according to a report by Bernama, Malaysia’s state-owned news agency, in May 2016 when the project was first announced. In May 2014, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources Development approved the two companies’ proposal to establish ...

BY K. VENKATESHWAR RAO A lube blending plant in Chhattisgarh, India, has been halted following an explosion that seriously injured one employee. Officials at Parvati Lubricants were unable to give a time frame for resuming production due to resulting legal action. Parvati Lubricants owner Vinay Sharma told Lube Report that the incident took place due to gas formation in a storage tank during renovation; the air passage hole in the tank was blocked during welding work. Four or five laborers were engaged in the repair without proper safety precautions. As a result, one laborer, Bhola Das, has been seriously injured, and others have sustained minor injuries. Photo: K. Venkateshwar Rao The incident occurred as a result of gas formation in this storage tank during renovation work. The police have booked Parvati Lubricants’ owners under Sections 285, 287 and 336 of the Indian Penal Code, and are waiting for the factory inspector’s report before taking any further action, said M...

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...