Originally Posted By: David1
Why do people say that Synthetic or Synthetic Oil in the USA would not be Synthetic in other countries say U.K or parts of Europe or perhaps even Canada?
Does USA Downgrade its Oil???
Im confused about this... Is there a post about this?
I just hear people say that USA has a weak opinion of what Synthetic oil is or the standard or somthing.
Any info would be nice
Thanks
Quote:
There was a whole court case on what could be considered synthetic for marketing purposes in the US. The decision was that you could market group III as synthetic in the US. Over in Europe it has to be group IV or V.
Now Group III is heavily processed crude oil, but we are talking processing to the point that the chemical structure of the components are changed. Where as group IV is formed from by reacting chemicals together.
In the past there was a bit of a performance gap between the two but at this point there isn't really that much of one.
We need to work on your internet searches.
No court case decided this, it was a BBB NAD decision:
Here are some excerpts from the Nov., 2000 issue of Car and Driver by Patrick Bedard
Quote:
...Here's what happened, according to a detailed account published in the trade magazine Lubricants World. Late in 1997, Castrol changed the formula of its Syntec "full synthetic motor oil", eliminating the polyalphaolefin (PAO) base stock (that's the "synthetic" part, which makes up about 70% by volume of what's in the bottle) and replacing it with a "hydroisomerized" [GroupIII] petroleum base stock.
Mobil Oil Corporation, maker of Mobil 1, "Worlds Leading Synthetic Motor Oil," said no fair and took its complaint to the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. NAD often arbitrates between feuding advertisers on their conflicting claims...
Still, there's more than one road to the point B of improved stability. Petroleum refiners in recent years have learned how to break apart certain undesirable molecules - wax, for example, which causes thickening of oil at low temperatures- and transform them by chemical reaction into helpful molecules. These new hydroisomerized base oils, in the view of some industry participants provided properties similar to PAO's but only cost half as much," Lubricants World reported...
All components for GroupIV and Group V base oils are derived from specific products resulting from crude oil distillation. These components are then synthesized to produce Groups IV and V.
The following is just Mola's opinion:
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The business council decision simply muddied the waters about what is and isn't a real synthetic.
Exon benefitted greatly because they could make their own GroupIII mixes and continue to make the same claims without having 100% synthetics in their formulations.
I have pointed out the fact that EXOM had GroupIII patents that pre-dated the Castrol decision and have asked them why they did not go to a chemistry council for a decision instead of some business council which knew nothing about lubrication technology.
Why would a major oil company go to a business group to resolve this issue instead of going to say the American Chemistry Council or other fully qualified groups that would have knowledge of lubrication engineering and the chemistry of lubricants?
Formulated oils today take the best performance aspects of many base oils and mix them.
It is the total formulation of the mix of various base oils groups and additives that make the good oils today.