PROJECT Leader, Dr Geoff Dobson, in charge of Automotive Engine Lubricants at BP's Sunbury Research Centre, is the first to applaud his own good luck. It came as a blessed bonus to crown months of effort by him and his team to formulate a satisfactory mineral base oil which would allow BP to make continued headway into the light viscosity automotive lubricants market without recourse to synthetics. The product they discovered in the last resort made this possible. And the background story adds another chapter to BP's not uneventful history.