It's what many anticipated after this weeks
round of base oil price increases, someone
was going to make a move on the price of
finished lubricants. Well
that someone is Shell and it happened faster
than usual.
Shell advised its marketers late yesterday
that it will push through a
general price increase on its lubricants of
8%. This increase will be effective on
February 22, 2010.
The speed at which Shell responded to
increases in the price of base oils is
somewhat uncharacteristic of what we have
seen in the past. Historically there is a
lag of several weeks before fished lubricant
price increases are announced in
response to increases in base oil prices. In
this case, the first announced price increase
for finished lubricants comes days after
several major producers of base oils
announced price increases ranging from $0.20
to $0.30 a gallon.
It should be noted that the last time majors
announced price increases on finished
lubricants was in
September/October of 2009. And following
that, they announced two unprecedented price
decreases in response to the crash in the
price of
crude.
It looks like 2010 may prove to be an
interesting year after a somewhat quite year
of pricing in 2009.
