South Korea lubricant consumption fell to a 10-year low of 990,455 kiloliters (889,627 metric tons) in 2019, the Korea Lubricating Oil Industries Association said in a report last week.
Last year’s total represented a 4.6 percent decrease from 1.04 million kiloliters in 2018, and the country’s lowest level of lube consumption since 2009, when the end of the Great Recession limited domestic sales to 863,446 kiloliters. In 2019, South Korea’s gross domestic product grew 2 percent, the slowest since 2008, according to Central Bank of Korea.