Benefits of a mid saps oil in a standard gas engine?

No doubt PAO reigns supreme when it comes to extreme oxidative stability, low volatility and high VI.
However the general consensus is that GTL performance is very close to PAO while being better at protecting seals and also better at mixing with additives.

The pearl plant in Qatar is a joint venture with the government and Shell wouldhave access to the gas free of charge.
I thought - probably got it wrong - that the reason Castrol Edge 0W-40 lost LL01 was oxidation test that BMW has for the N20 engines.
 
Joint venture doesn’t mean freebies. On Wikipedia (not the most reliable) it says they have free input gas, not sure what that means. I’m sure they have to pay certain fees/possible taxes etc. Related party transactions have carrying and exchange values which do affect financial statements per IFRS, so you can’t say free of charge. But we are talking accounting now not oil.

I doubt Qatar paid for the plant out of their pocket. It was Shell. Maybe they subsidized it? Before even putting drill to sediment they put paper to pen and probably used a discounted cash flow model to determine the NPV for the plant itself.

I still haven’t been provided any sources of academic research or tests which prove GTL > PAO or is equal to it. Do I doubt it? No. But facts don’t care about my gut feelings and it would be nice to see.
I'm sure the deep pockets of Qatar was a deciding factor in choosing it as the location for the largest gas plant besides the actual gas desposits.

Knowing Qatar's LNG ambitions on top of subsiding the plant, they would probably go as far as far as providing the feed in gas at minimal costs.
Probably another factor behind GTL's price/performance ratio.
 
The tradeoff with low saps is increased wear.
Currently using this and it's been great. Also understand that GTL base has the lowest NOACK evaporation losses. This is very important IMO for hot running / oil destroying T-GDI engines.
Millions of taxis in EU that run C3 oils would like to say something.
 
I thought - probably got it wrong - that the reason Castrol Edge 0W-40 lost LL01 was oxidation test that BMW has for the N20 engines.
AMong other things. BMW raised oxidation requirement, which was already most stringent in industry, to squeeze longer OCI. N20 test is for specific timing chain issues. I would say there are other requirements we do not know that made LL01 and LL04 bit challenging.
 
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