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.
