Maxum Petroleum (previously named Global Petroleum, Inc.) was formed in 2006 by its parent, SPI Petroleum LLC, to continue the consolidation of the fragmented commercial fuel and lubricant distribution industry, as begun by SPI Petroleum in 2004. Maxum Petroleum is the leading independent petroleum marketer in the country, providing a comprehensive fuel and lubricant offering to commercial and industrial industries nationally. Petroleum Products will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maxum Petroleum, and will continue to market and operate under the Petroleum Products brands. The entire management team of Petroleum Products, including its President and previous owner, Pat Graney, will continue in their current roles.

Castrol believes that this step can improve its operational capabilities and ensure back-up supply options that will better serve its customers.

The Castrol Global Core Range (GCR) of products is a subset of all Castrol Industrial products currently available in world. The rollout of global products new to the Americas region has already begun and will continue over the next months until complete.

According to Castrol Industrial, the GCR products will have "singular formulations and will be consistent in performance and availability across the globe in all markets."

According to ARG, this new partial synthetic is a "high performance, low viscosity racing oil, tailored to maximize horsepower in racing engine." They add that "it contains a strong detergent and dispersant and ZDDP antiwear additive package to help protect critical engine parts from deposits and wear in highly stressed racing engines." Moreover, the say the synthetic component of the racing engine oil enhances protection afforded at high and low temperature extremes.

As readers of Jobbers World may recall, in a market research study by Petroleum Trends International, ARG was ranked as one of the leading major oil companies in the US market when nearly 200 lubricant distributors were surveyed on 48 key business issues considered important to them when doing business with the majors. ARG ranked particularly high in such areas as operational efficiency, pricing policies, credit issues/resolution, lead time, completeness of orders, frequency of sales calls, and return policy. In addition, lubricant distributors say ARG's management team is very accessible and responsive and they really seam to appreciate their business.

Petroleum Trends is now conducting interviews for the second edition of its study, Lubricant Supplier- Distributor Relations, 2007. This study, which is due to be released at the end of 2007, is designed specifically to assist major oil companies to better serve their valued channel partners.