"Pat Barry" wrote in message ...
Dear Dave:

My maintenance business was affected by the Aeroshell Oil problem since we
had
bought the 15W50 oil during the problem period. The problem, as I learned
when I
called Shell, as that a transfer pump between a vat and the bottling line
was
shedding metal fragments, but that the fragments were less than ten
microns
which would not harm an engine since they were smaller than fragments that
dislodge during normal engine wear and stay in circulation until the next
oil
change - however they had chosen to make a full breast of the problem, and
they
announced it to the media, which is where I learned about the problem.

I called the aircraft owners who may (only may) have gotten infected oil
and
they asked me to change the oil immediately and to check for damage. Only
one
twin engine aircraft was found to have been filled with oil that was
produced
during the suspect period, and Shell offered to pay the entire cost of oil
change, including filter and any investigative services we chose to do. We
changed the oil and filters, and borescoped the engine and did oil
analyses, and
found normal operation, and returned the plane to service, and we have
monitored
it since and found no problems at all. Everything is normal.

Shell could not have been more cooperative, and when the check arrived for
the
cost of the oil change and the other work I saw it was from their
liability
insurance carrier. In any case, I have to hand it to Shell because they
could
have ignored it, but not wanting a Mobil Oil debacle like they had in
Australia
(which led to having to overhaul some hundreds of engines due to fuel
contamination) they chose to deal with the problem - an admirable action!

Actually Shell did nothing and admitted nothing until after the word got
out. If you knew who to ask they would quietly tell you over the phone what
batches were in question. They then made an announcement and posted to
their WEB site only after it looked like the story was going to blow sky
high. As I remember the reimbursement required a number of hoops to be
jumped through.