The AECA is no more a watchdog than anyone else - it's the Euro car mfgrs. assn! We're not talking NASA here, they do not even have their own labs, they're adminstrators, bureaucrats!
FYI, Mobil 1 didn't lose it's rating because of AECA, it lost it's ratings because of a counter-suit by Castrol over MB1's suit charging them with mis-labeling their oil as synthetic while containing mineral base stocks (ironically something MB1 now does after legally redefining the meaning of the term 'synthetic' to mean that some mineral derived base stocks are acceptible within the meaning 'synthetic'). The outgrowth of which is the legal marketing term 'Semi-synthetic' used in britain and the EU.
The troubling thing is your inference that without an AECA rating, the company producing the oil is knowingly producing an inferior product and perpetrating a fraud against the consumer, or that their oil is automatically inferior without the rating. And I just don't buy into those concepts, especially in the given context.
