Question-and-Answer Session
Thank you. [Operator Instructions].
Your first question comes from the line of David Beglieter of Deutsch Bank. Please proceed.
David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank Securities
Thank you. Good afternoon. Patrick, can you share with us the data on Carbon Black volumes in prior recessions, how that has trended?
Patrick M. Prevost - Chief Executive Officer and President
We have indicated? as I mentioned in the call that we were pleased with our performance through the last recessions and prior to the call of course we went through those numbers, and what I will do is ask Bill Brady to provide some background to that data set.
William J. Brady - Executive Vice-President and General Manager of Carbon Black Business Group
Well, I think if you go back over the past two recessions we found certainly a dip in the volumes for relatively short period of time, and then it bounced back relatively quickly. The other thing we saw in both recessions is that oil prices decreased, as economic activities slowed down and so that had an offsetting effect to a lower volume. So that’s really what we saw in the last two recessions.
David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank Securities
And Bill, how much of your rubber black volumes are now in Europe? Western Europe and North America?
William J. Brady - Executive Vice-President and General Manager of Carbon Black Business Group
Rubber black, I would say? just a second, I will give you the exact number.
David Begleiter - Deutsche Bank Securities
And one more question while you look that up. Just on Cesium Formate, despite higher utilization rates neither the revenues or profits increased? Can you just explain why that occurred?
Jonathan P. Mason - Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice-President
Let me try to take that question while Bill looks at the data in terms of volumes for rubber black. Dave, the unique situation with the Cesium Formate is that it is a business where we rent out products and it’s a business that’s driven very much by projects. And as we go from project to project, it’s the portfolio of these projects that determines the performance of the business. So, it is a business that will have, underlying, some volatility due to that unique feature of it.
I? what we are seeing is that we are seeing more and more demand for the type of product like Cesium Formate is, because of its unique features from a technical point of view allowing drilling at very high pressures and very high temperatures, but also because it is a much better environmental solution for these type of drilling. So we are seeing more and more requests. We are working with more and more people in this field and we are quite confident that we will start? continue to see some trends. However, performance on the quarter to quarter basis will be somewhat volatile because of the project nature of the business.
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