Shell Eastern Petroleum announced that it has begun construction of its new Lube Oil Blending Plant and Grease Manufacturing Plant in Tuas, southwest of Singapore. Shell’s new Tuas LOBP and GMP will replace its existing Woodlands North facility with an increased capacity of approximately 40%.

Ford announced last week it is recalling 161,334 model year 2013 Escape SUVs equipped with 1.6-liter engines because the engine cylinder head may overheat and cause cracks that could allow oil to leak potentially causing a fire. The recall is global, but mostly in the United States,

An accelerating economy has doubled the passenger car fleet in Brazil to about 30 million vehicles since 2000 and, as a result, has also driven significant increase in demand for lubricants in the country. This has propelled Brazil to the sixth largest lubricants market globally, after China, the U.S., India, Japan and Russia, but ahead of Germany.

Shell announced last Monday it will more than double the lubricants production at its Torzhok plant in northwestern Russia in 2014 from 39 million liters planned for 2013. Shell also said it plans to start exporting lubricants from the plant to Ukraine, Belarus and other nearby countries.

ExxonMobil Marine Fuels & Lubricants has launched Mobilgard™ 5100, a specially formulated cylinder oil designed to mitigate the effects of cold corrosion in new design two-stroke marine engines operating on heavy fuel oil. It has been formulated to address the problem of cold corrosion which occurs when the engine’s cylinders operate at conditions below the acid dew point.

• Eastman Chemical Opens New Specialty Fluids Testing Lab in Singapore for Eastman Therminol® Heat Transfer Fluids and Eastman Skydrol® Aviation Hydraulic Fluids
• Gazprom Neft Launches Production of Eco-friendly Motor Oils
• BP New Zealand Planning to Move Its Head Office to Aukland
• LUKOIL Posts 3Q 2013 Net Income of $3,105 Million, an Increase of 48% Compared to 2Q 2013 and EBITDA of $5,472 Million
• NSF International Acquires Brazil’s Bioensaios Analysis and Environmental Consultancy Ltd.