A bit more history of the oil industry

As we know, at the dawn of the automotive age, only mineral automotive oils were used in engines. Synthetics as such appeared when there was a need to start an aircraft engine in arctic frosts (for more on the history of the oil industry's development, see the article on synthetic and mineral engine oils).

What, essentially, is a synthetic base? Right — it's an artificially synthesised counterpart to a mineral base, but with certain parameters substantially improved that matter especially for engine operation. Above all, that's temperature-viscosity stability. In other words, the main task carried out by the expensive synthesis of base oils is to produce an automotive oil whose properties depend far less on current temperature and operating time than a mineral oil's do.

The result is engine oils that flow considerably more freely in hard frost and, correspondingly, thicken more at high operating temperatures, compared with equivalent mineral oils. On top of that, synthetic oils also "go bad" more slowly, or to put it plainly, they need changing less often.