Who owns the oil brands today?

“Take the Castrol, it’s a British oil, proven over the years,” the shop assistant advises, and plenty of people buy exactly that way: by the brand, as if it were a family name that guarantees something. The common belief is that the brand on the can never changes: Castrol belongs to BP, Shell is Anglo-Dutch, Valvoline is American, and Liqui Moly is still a small German firm with a character of its own.

In fact, many brands have changed owners, and some have even changed their names. Some have dissolved into other people’s groups; others, on the contrary, stubbornly keep to themselves. Let us try to work out who belongs to whom today and, more importantly, whether it makes any difference at all to your engine.

The big oil-company brands

Castrol. Since 2000, when BP bought Burmah Castrol, the brand has belonged to Britain’s BP (how Aral ended up in the same family was covered in the article Aral and Castrol — twin brothers?). In early 2025 BP announced a strategic review of Castrol (in plain words, it started wondering what to do with it), and in December of the same year it agreed to sell 65% of Castrol to the American infrastructure investor Stonepeak. The remaining 35% stays with BP. The deal has been signed but not yet completed: it is due to close once the regulators give their approval. For the driver standing at the shop shelf, meanwhile, nothing changes: the same oil names and the same approvals.

Aral. Germany’s Aral has belonged to BP since 2002, and no sale of the Aral brand itself has been announced. Aral oils have so far been made within the BP and Castrol lubricants business, and who will make them after the deal has not yet been said. So if the deal closes as planned, the “twin brothers” Aral and Castrol will most likely be living in different families: one with BP, the other mostly with the investor.

Shell. For a long time Shell was Anglo-Dutch in the literal sense of the word (read about it in the history of Shell). In January 2022 the company simplified its structure: it dropped the words “Royal Dutch” from its name, became plain Shell plc and moved its tax residence to the United Kingdom, where it is also incorporated. Its passenger-car oil range is still called Shell Helix.

Mobil and Esso. Both brands still belong to America’s ExxonMobil. In Europe, though, the Esso and Mobil lubricants businesses have been merged into one, and in Ukraine what we mostly see is Mobil.

Eni (formerly Agip). Italy’s Eni has for many years sold its engine oils under its own name (the i-Sint range) rather than under the Agip brand so many people know. So if you are looking for “the good old Agip”, look for the word Eni on the can.

Independent, by their own account

Not every brand lives under the roof of an oil giant. At least a few brands that Ukrainian drivers know well call themselves independent or family-owned.

Motul. The French company is still private and family-owned: no oil group owns it.

Addinol. A German producer from Leuna whose roots go back to a plant of 1936, with its own production since 2007. It describes itself as one of the few medium-sized lubricant makers in Germany that are independent of the big groups.

77 Lubricants. A Dutch brand from Dordrecht, founded in 2008; its link with the local blending plant was covered in the article 77 Lubricants, Gulf — OEM oils from the Netherlands. Today the brand calls itself one of the largest independent lubricant brands in Europe, with a plant of about 130,000 tonnes a year. Who owns the brand itself, its website does not say.

Yacco did not make this list. The French brand, founded in 1919, still sells oils for cars, motorcycles and racing, but it does not say who stands behind it today: it simply calls itself a French company. So we will not guess.

New owners and new names

1. Liqui Moly in the Würth group. For about twenty years the Würth group was the company’s silent partner, and then it bought out the stake of its majority owner and managing director, Ernst Prost. Since 1 January 2018 Liqui Moly has been a Würth group company. The brand, the head office in Ulm and the production in Germany have all stayed where they were.

2. Valvoline now under Aramco. On 1 March 2023 the American Valvoline Inc. sold its global packaged-oil business to the Saudi company Aramco. The Valvoline oils sold in Europe and in Ukraine are now made by Valvoline Global Operations, part of Aramco, while Valvoline Inc. kept only its chain of quick oil-change service centres in the USA and Canada. One name, two completely different owners.

3. Comma has become Brazilian. ExxonMobil sold Britain’s Comma to the Brazilian group Cosan; the deal closed on 1 July 2012. Today Comma is part of Cosan’s lubricants division, which is called Moove.

4. Gulf: one name, different owners. In most countries, including most of Europe, the Gulf brand belongs to Gulf Oil International, which is wholly owned by the Hinduja group, Indian in origin. In the USA (and a few other countries) the Gulf brand is used separately by other companies.

5. Lotos has become ORLEN OIL. Poland’s Orlen completed its merger with Grupa Lotos on 1 August 2022, in July 2023 Lotos Oil was absorbed into Orlen Oil, and since January 2024 the former Lotos and Platinum Orlen Oil products have been sold under a single brand, ORLEN OIL. The Lotos name is gradually disappearing from the cans.

6. Total has become TotalEnergies. On 28 May 2021 the shareholders’ meeting renamed Total as TotalEnergies. Since then the oils have been called TotalEnergies Quartz, and the Elf brand with its Evolution range lives alongside them in the same group.

What does this mean for the buyer?

Does all this mean that Castrol will now get worse and Valvoline is “not the real thing” any more? No. The point is that, even before all these deals, the brand on the can was far from always telling you where and by whom the oil was made. The big brands make their oil at different plants in different countries, and small ones often fill their cans with a product from someone else’s blending plant (read more in the article what OEM oil is). It is rather like a café that was sold together with its sign: the sign is the same, but who is now in the kitchen you cannot see from the street.

So there are a few simple rules worth remembering.

1. The brand owner is not an approval. A carmaker’s approval is given not to a group or a fund but to a specific oil of a specific brand (see what oil approvals are). So check the approval on every can rather than trusting the name, whoever it belongs to.

2. “British”, “German”, “French” are advertising, not a specification. Once the deal closes, the majority owner of the “British” Castrol will be an American investor, and the “American” Valvoline oils are made by a company belonging to Saudi Arabia’s Aramco. Your engine, believe me, does not care which country the shareholders sit in.

3. An old name on the shelf is not yet a counterfeit. A Lotos can next to ORLEN OIL may well be left over from an old batch. But if you do not know what a genuine can of your oil should look like now, buy from the source: from the official distributor or from a trusted supplier (for how, see the article how not to buy counterfeit oil).

Let me say it once more: you choose oil neither by the flag nor by the owner’s surname. The brand’s owner may change as soon as tomorrow, and your engine will not notice. What it will notice is something else: whether the oil in the can meets the approval that your car’s manufacturer requires. That is exactly what you should check.