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May 11, 2004
API's Final Lunge to SM
By David McFall
After more than a year of often leisurely debate over technical specifications, the American Petroleum Institute's Lubricants Committee is lunging headlong toward the finish line with API Service Category SM, the global gasoline engine oil category which will parallel the auto industry's new ILSAC GF-4 specification.
On April 27, the Lubricants Committee met in a 40-minute telephone conference to wrap up the final issues relating to SM, and to decide when API staff may begin issuing licenses for the new oils. The next and presumably final step in this long process is a letter ballot, already under way, with a final meeting on June 3 to formally confirm SM's specifications and first licensing date. If the ballot passes as expected, SM oils could be displaying API's donut trademark beginning in early October.
The auto industry continued its push to make SM fully equivalent to GF-4 or to alert customers that differences exist.
General Motors' Mike McMillan, chairman of the International Lubricant Standardization and Approval Committee, which represents U.S. and Japanese auto interests, had asked the committee to add the following footnote to the SM specification in API Publication 1509: "These oils may not provide all of the performance requirements consistent with vehicle manufacturers' recommendations for gasoline-fueled vehicles."
This footnote would have applied to all SM engines oils other than the five energy-conserving multigrades -- SAE 0W-20, 0W-30, 5W-20, 5W-30 and 10W-30 -- covered by ILSAC's GF-4 standard.
Earlier, API had agreed to full equivalency (except for the fuel economy requirement) between GF-4 and SM oils for the five viscosity grades named above. But it also voted that all other viscosity grades would be permitted to have less-restrictive phosphorus and sulfur limits than GF-4 oils. GF oils have limits on those chemicals because they poison the catalytic converters in vehicle exhaust systems. Oil companies have argued that they need SM oils to be less restrictive, to allow them formulating flexibility to meet differing resource constraints worldwide, especially in base oils.
The committee voted 9 to 1 (ConocoPhillips was the lone opposition vote), with Infineum and Pinnacle Oil abstaining, not to accept ILSAC's footnote. "The catalyst compatibility for the ILSAC standard had not been pulled over into the non-ILSAC grades in earlier S categories," pointed out BP Castrol's Barbara Dennis, "and there was never a need for any type of disclaimer in prior S category definitions then, so it doesn't seem to be needed now."
Over the past decade, first licensing of each S category upgrade took place 12 months after formal technical approval; API SL's first licensing was shortened to nine months. Now, even a nine- or 12-month wait for SM is seen as prohibitively long, leaving API in the awkward position of having to overturn its own longstanding, legally counseled -- and fair -- interval between approval and first licensing.
Proposed initial licensing dates ranged from July 31 (the same as GF-4) to six months after SM's approval (meaning December at the earliest). After hearing and rejecting several options, the Committee agreed to ballot a four-month period from SM's approval to first licensing, making early October likely.
By comparison, ILSAC GF-4 engine oils will be licensed to use API's starburst trademark beginning July 31, six-and-a-half months after ILSAC's Jan. 14 approval of the GF-4 specifications. By July 31, oil and additive companies are expected to have had adequate time to formulate, test and resolve marketplace issues for GF-4 oils.
Not so for SM oils, excepting those five multigrades that will be equivalent to GF-4. Until the April 27 meeting, API had been unable to nail down the final SM specifications, and so formulating and testing had also been held up. Moreover, under API's approval process the earliest that formal approval can occur will be sometime in early June.
Some sentiment had emerged to allow licensing on July 31 at least for those SM products that meet GF-4 requirements. Infineum's Joan Evans, who chairs the American Chemistry Council's Petroleum Additives Panel's Task Group, pointed out, "While we haven't had time to formulate non-ILSAC SM grades, we have had six months to formulate the ILSAC grades." That comment was countered by BP Castrol's Dennis, who stated, "If you license the ILSAC SM grades at the same time as GF-4 products you create an elite class of products based on fuel economy." The simultaneous licensing of products meeting both GF-4 and SM on July 31 was rejected without a vote.
Larry Kuntschik, a consultant who represents the Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association on engine oil issues, stated that ILMA preferred to hold off first licensing until six to nine months after SM approval.
"We surveyed four major additive suppliers on available test capability and timing for approval of market general technology additive systems for SM," Kuntschik explained. "All were comfortable with a shorter licensing period for ILSAC-grade SM oils. For non-ILSAC grades, however, the consensus was six months, with one supplier believing nine months would be required due to late finalization of sulfur/phosphorus limits, base oil supply issues and possible test equipment limitations."
"ACC has come up with a consensus position of six months after SM approval. Anything less than that would really make us scramble," said Tom Cousineau of Ethyl. "The committee ought to heed what ACC is saying on this issue." ACC’s consensus position included the statement, “Some additive companies could support a short time period while others felt that six months was a minimum they could accept.”
The Committee split the difference and voted 10 to 1 (ConocoPhillips again voting against), with one abstention, to ballot first SM licensing four months after SM approval.
"This date is not ideal but it's the best we can do now," Castrol’s Dennis commented, expressing the general feeling.
Taking the longer view, Shell's Jim Newsom cautioned that this shortened period – only four months rather than nine or the customary 12 – “may come back to bite us during the GF-5 process.”
