Today, we kick off our look back at the top industry news items of the week with a report from Old World Industries, which is selling its Chemical Business to Indorama Ventures PCL of Bangkok, Thailand. The deal includes the company’s ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol manufacturing facility in Clear Lake, Texas. In addition, as part of the purchase agreement, Old World will enter into a long-term glycol supply contract with Indorama for its antifreeze production in the U.S. All of Old World’s consumer product lines, including PEAK brand products, are unaffected by the sale.

In other highly read news on AMN this week, O’Reilly Automotive announced record revenues and earnings for its fourth quarter and year ended Dec. 31, 2011, continuing a 19-year success streak. O’Reilly’s sales for the fourth quarter increased $81 million, or 6 percent, to $1.39 billion from $1.31 billion for the same period one year ago. Sales for the year ended Dec. 31, 2011, increased $391 million, or 7 percent, to $5.79 billion from $5.40 billion for the same period one year ago.

Meanwhile in the manufacturing segment, Federal-Mogul announced this week that it plans to update nearly 20 of its aftermarket product catalogs this year. Federal-Mogul says this update represents the company’s most aggressive catalog release schedule in several years and will complement its web-based catalogs available at www.Fme-Cat.com.

Last in our recap of the week’s top news we learn of significant legislative efforts underway that could impact the automotive aftermarket.

U.S. Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) recently introduced H.R. 3889, the Promoting Automotive Repair, Trade and Sales (PARTS) Act in the House of Representatives, which would amend the U.S. design patent law to change the period of design patent protection for automakers from 14 years to 30 months.

Also on Capitol Hill last week, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard was joined by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Congressman Sander Levin (D-Mich.), as well as representatives from the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a non-profit partnership between U.S. manufacturers and the USW, to highlight job losses due primarily from the sourcing of automotive parts and components from China by U.S.-based vehicle manufacturers. AAM stated that more than 400,000 jobs in the U.S. auto supply chain have been lost since 2000 and another 1.6 million U.S. jobs are at risk unless China’s illegal trading practices are curtailed.