Shell Oil Products (SOPUS) last week announced a general price increase on lubricants of up to 4%, effective September 23, 2013, which equates to roughly a 24 cents per gallon increase for bulk lubricants and a 40 cents per gallon increase for packaged products.

Lubrizol announced last Monday the opening of a world-class additives manufacturing facility in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. The plant is the latest addition to Lubrizol`s long-term investment and growing presence in China. It is also the cornerstone of Lubrizol`s 10-year phased investment plan, launched in 2010, to upgrade operations and increase global capacity in additives.

Shell last Tuesday began construction of a $200 million lubricant blending plant in Indonesia, the largest operated by an international oil company in the country. The plant, located in north Jakarta, has an annual capacity of 120,000 tons of lubricants. Plans to build the Jakarta plant, Shell's first in Indonesia but its sixth in Southeast Asia, was announced last November.

Tide Water Oil, part of the diversified Andrew Yule group, is looking to set up a subsidiary in Mexico for selling its lubricants in the Latin American market. Tide Water, which manufactures lubricants under the Veedol brand name, has already started operations in Europe and the Gulf countries for which separate subsidiaries had been opened in the respective nations.

SK Lubricants, who announced last year that it planned to raise at least $1.3 billion in an IPO in the first half of 2013, has seen its first-half 2013 net profit plunge, making it more difficult for the company to list its shares within this year's end. SK Lubricants, wholly owned by South Korea's largest oil refiner SK Innovation, has been preparing for the IPO since last October.

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