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Hydraulic oil price in Pakistan: PSO's HYGROL AW 68 went from Rs 771 to Rs 943 a litre in twelve weeks, and the next circular will pass Rs 1,000
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#hydraulic oil price Pakistan#PSO lubricant prices#base oil shortage#Group III base oil#machine shop consumables#way oil

Hydraulic oil price in Pakistan: PSO's HYGROL AW 68 went from Rs 771 to Rs 943 a litre in twelve weeks, and the next circular will pass Rs 1,000

Uzair bin Haroon

Look at the sight glass on the press brake before you read this. If it is below the line, the oil you top it up with this afternoon costs 22 per cent more than it did in March, and PSO has not printed a new industrial price since 10 June while crude went from $92 to $108. That gap closes one way.

HYGROL AW 68, the anti-wear hydraulic oil in most of the presses and power packs I look after, was Rs 770.59 a litre including GST in PSO's circular of 19 March. On 10 June it was Rs 942.53. Four price lists in twelve weeks: 19 March, 26 March, 1 May, 10 June. A 210-litre drum went from Rs 161,824 to Rs 197,931.

Same oil. Same drum.

A retail shelf of Pennzoil, Castrol and Valvoline motor oil bottles with a red arrow up labelled Prices and a red arrow down labelled Supply
From Motor Oil Prices Are INCREASING & Supply Is DECREASING by The Motor Oil Geek. The same shortage from a US parts counter, in April.

Every grade a machine shop pours moved by about the same amount.

PSO industrial grade (210 L drum, Rs/litre incl. 18% GST)19 March10 JuneChange
HYGROL AW 68 (anti-wear hydraulic)770.59942.53+22.3%
HYGROL AW 32 (anti-wear hydraulic)750.05917.65+22.3%
SPINCOT 10 (spindle oil)662.20826.33+24.8%
WAY OIL 68 (slideway oil)700.80874.83+24.8%
TEXOL 32 (machinery oil)744.04926.35+24.5%
GEARLED EP 68 (gear oil)798.25966.00+21.0%
CUT OIL (soluble cutting oil)997.091,158.84+16.2%
EP 2 grease (Rs/kg, 182 kg drum)1,877.001,967.76+4.8%

The straight mineral oils moved most. The grease barely moved. Keep that in mind.

Why does a Pakistani hydraulic oil track a war? Because the drum is nearly all base oil. ILMA, the US blenders' association, puts base stock at roughly 75 per cent of an engine oil and up to 98 per cent of a hydraulic or turbine oil. Nothing else in the drum can absorb the move. And base oil did this, on Petroleum Trends International figures that F&L Asia reported from the Asian Lubricant Exhibition panel of 9 September: Group I from $3.30 to $7.20 a gallon between January and July, Group II from $2.85 to $6.45, Group III from $3.40 to $11.40. The last is the 235 per cent in the headlines. Hydraulic and way oils sit in Group I and II, so the 120 per cent lines are ours.

A worn hydraulic piston pump on a machine with hoses attached, captioned Main Pump Failure Causes
From Hydraulic Pump Failure and Maintenance Tips by ConEquip Parts and Equipment. The pump is the expensive end of the same oil.

Two things from that panel matter more to a shop than the chart.

Ten days became ten weeks. Salman Saadat of Petrolube said a base oil cargo from Saudi Arabia to the UAE used to take about ten days by ship and now goes round the Cape of Good Hope. Refining is not the constraint, moving the molecules is, and the drum you order in October was paid for in July.

And the oil under the label has changed. When a refinery changes its crude feed, the base oil changes with it, and Aleksandr Borisov of Petrobell said buyers everywhere are having to retest the product. Paul Nai of Lubrizol added that the API's emergency provisional licences for reformulated engine oils are temporary, and that as far as he knows no OEM has said the changes are acceptable.

What that means on the slideway

Way oil has a tackifier in it so it clings to a vertical slide instead of draining into the sump, and the friction it gives is what stops a table stick-slipping on a fine feed. Change the base stock under the same label and the feel changes. I have chased a surface-finish fault for two days that turned out to be a drum from a different batch. Ask for the batch, and put the first drum on one machine before you put it on all of them. And do not stretch a drain interval unless the manual says you can. The oil is Rs 942 a litre. A pump is not.

Used engine oil draining in a thin stream from a sump plug under a vehicle
From Motor oil prices rising, service centers asked to cut supply by FOX4 News Kansas City. What goes in the drain pan is money.
A presenter at a desk reading a printed Nissan technical bulletin, with the caption Motor Oil Shortage
From Motor Oil Shortage - Nissan Issues A TSB Detailing Oil Inventory Reduction and Price Increases by Boston Auto Blog. The consumer end of the same shortage: Costco is limiting US members to two boxes a week at $58 for ten quarts that used to be $30 (The Drive, 11 September).

Now the call. PSO's industrial list has stood since 10 June. Brent on Steve Puckett's panel chart was $92.50; Trading Economics had it toward $108 on 13 September, a four-month high, after the East-West pipeline was shut. ILMA's customer note says Argus and ICIS do not expect Group III supply or Group II refining economics to normalise until at least mid-2027, and that Group II is trading below diesel for the first time on record, so refiners would rather make diesel than base oil. None of that is in the June price.

My read: PSO issues a new industrial-grades circular before 31 October, and HYGROL AW 68 in it is above Rs 1,000 a litre including GST. That is a 6 per cent move on a list that did 22 in twelve weeks. And the grease line catches up: EP 2 moved 4.8 per cent while the oils moved 22, and grease is mostly the same base oil, so I have it above Rs 2,100 a kilo by 31 December. Both are my judgement, and both can be wrong by the date given.

So: buy the drum this month, not the pail next month. Fix the weep on the ram seal you have been walking past. And ask the blender what base stock is in the drum. If they cannot tell you, that is an answer too.

The 11 September cost sheet has the diesel line and the 12 September IEA piece has the Gulf's refining share. This is the other product from the same refinery.

Sources