MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shell is setting up a lubricants technical centre in Shanghai to work closer with customers in the region, reported F+L.
Selda Gunsel, vice president of global commercial technology within Shell’s Projects & Technology organization, said that the centre would be up and running in the first quarter of 2014. It will be Shell’s first such centre in Asia.
The new research centre will focus mainly on next-generation automotive and industrial lubricants and greases.
Shell currently has three innovation hubs located in Houston, Amsterdam and Bangalore.
"Based on our previous experience, building partnerships with original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) is difficult, because they are far away. That’s why we want to be close to our customers, particularly the OEMs, to co-engineer our products," she said.
Shell has spent between USD1.3 and 1.5 billion annually on research and development.
As MRC informed previously, Royal Dutch Shell will cut spending in its American exploration and production business by a fifth and could sell more of its shale assets, in another sign that oil majors are struggling to make profits in the booming sector.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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