Gazpromneft-Lubricants sold 250,000 metric tons of its automotive lubricants in the first nine months of 2021, an increase of 12% compared to the same period last year, driven by higher retail sales.
The company is well on track to sell more base oils and finished lubricants for the entire year of 2021 than it did last year.
Parent company Gazprom Neft, a Russian oil major, reported recently that its 2020 combined base oils and finished lubricant sales amounted to 440,000 tons. For the first nine months of 2021, its lube arm reports 420,000 tons of combined base oil and finished lubricant sales – just shy of the result for the whole of 2020.
“What we are seeing is a distinctive trend of increased demand for synthetic lubricants in the retail segment, through wholesale stores, in gasoline and service stations and in other marketplaces,” Gazpromneft-Lubricants General Director Anatoly Skoromets said in a news release last week.
He added that the share of the company’s premium lubricant sales in the first nine months of 2021 reached 59% of the total, up 9% compared to the same period in 2020. Gazpromneft-Lubricants’ automotive products are sold under the G-Energy and Gazpromneft brands.
The company also reported 10% higher sales of its lubricants abroad. This year, it started to ship products to Austria, Oman, Myanmar and Qatar.
The company said its most sought-after products in export markets are industrial, hydraulic and gear oils. It reported increased demand for lubricants used in specialized equipment – the demand was 86% higher in Russia and 38% abroad, compared to the same nine-month period in 2020.
Gazprom Neft is continuing construction on and upgrading of its base oil plant in Omsk, where it plans to start streaming production of API Group II and III base oils by the end of 2022, Skoromets said. The $424 million project will give the site capacity to make 220,000 metric tons per year of Group II and III oils. The refining complex in Omsk currently has a Group I plant with capacity of 260,000 t/y as well as a 110,000 t/y lubricant blending plant and 17,000 t/y process oil unit. The company operates three other blending plants – in Moscow, Serbia and Italy.
After Lukoil’s and Rosneft’s lubricant entities, Gazpromneft-Lubricants is the third-largest lubricant marketer in Russia, capable of producing about 600,000 tons of combined base oils and finished lubricants annually.