All SOPUS oils, synthetic or blend, have very low pour points and they certainly DO approach those of PAO! Pennzoil Platinum HM 5W-20 is rated -51C as is Quaker State 5W-30. And since solubility of GTL is rather poor and rivaling that of PAO, they would almost certainly have to use some type of ester and Group I blended in, no?..
We really don't have Shell Ultra Helix 0W-40 here, but Pennzoil Ultra Platinum has a -51C pour point...
GTL has poor solubility (like any other Group III) but lacks the issue of being hard on seals, so it doesn't need POE to balance it out. Ergo, the carrier oil can then be something less expensive, like Group II. I suppose they could also use a small amount of AN's, but GTL is less difficult to blend with than PAO and Shell doesn't make AN's, that's a Mobil thing, so they'd have to buy them.
We need to be careful not to confuse the pour point of the finished product, which is influenced by PPD's, with that of the base oils. You'll note I explicitly called out base oils.
Here are the common GTL base oil viscosities and their specs:
As you can see these all have superior pour points when compared to your traditional Group III like Yubase:
But don't come close to what we see with the same viscosities in PAO from Mobil:
The nice thing about GTL is that it has less wax in it than your typical Group III, so likely requires less PPD's and those PPD's are more effective, which is what we see in terms of performance in the final products. With PAO, you can just avoid using PPD's altogether, but the final product's pour point is influenced by other aspects of the formulation, like the POE and AN's potentially used to help it out, and the additive package itself.
