Following an announcment a little over a month ago that it will be increasing prices by as much as 18% on lubricants and greases effective September 8, 2008, Chevron last week announced a general price increase of all lubricating oils, gear lubes and greases by up to 11% to be effective October 10, 2008.

ConocoPhillips announced to its lubricants marketers last week the addition of two new automotive lubricants along with a reformulated oil to the 76 Lubricants motor oil line. Two updates were also offered to the tri-branded automatic transmission fluid products.

CITGO Petroleum has retained Goldman Sachs as financial advisor in connection with the potential sale of both its finished lubricants and its base oils businesses. According to Goldman, Sachs & Co., CITGO prefers that these be sold together, but reserves the right to sell them to separate buyers.

The new IdleAire, Inc., comprised of six investment management companies, now owns essentially all of the bankrupt IdleAire Technologies Corp.'s assets with the official closing last week on their successful $17.5 million bid submitted earlier this year.

YRC Worldwide announced yesterday that it is merging the corporation's two largest operating subsidiaries, Yellow Transportation and Roadway. Since acquiring Roadway, the company has reduced duplicate back-office functions, shared technology applications, formed common management teams and, most recently, combined corporate sales.

The 3rd Edition of our Synthetic Lubricant Cross Reference Chart Book, containing over 7,500 fully synthetic automotive and Industrial oils and greases manufactured/ marketed by over 500 worldwide lubricant companies and OEMs, is now complete and available in the online Digital Version.