Natural Gas: Making The Right Decision with Howard Soule

00:00:00 Speaker 1
This episode of The Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil & Gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar has manufactured engines for drilling, production, well service and gas compression. With more than 2100 dealer locations worldwide, Caterpillar offers customers a dedicated support team to assist with their premier power solutions.

00:00:28 Speaker 2
Welcome to The Energy Pipeline Podcast with your host, KC Yost. Tune in each week to learn more about industry issues, tools, and resources to streamline and modernize the future of the industry. Whether you work in oil and gas or bring a unique perspective, this podcast is your knowledge transfer hub. Welcome to The Energy Pipeline.

00:00:52 KC Yost
Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Energy Pipeline Podcast. So in your personal life, how does your vehicle run when you constantly switch grades of gasoline, or if you buy a tank full of a bad gasoline that's been contaminated? How well does your vehicle run if you don't exercise the engine occasionally? Do you end up with carbon deposits building up if you go 30 miles an hour and stop signs here and there for a year, year and a half? So out on the wellhead or along the pipeline, how will a natural gas engine, I don't care if it's a compressor driver or a generator or whatever, perform if the BTU content of the natural gas changes significantly, or if there are contaminants in that natural gas? How well will natural gas engine operate at a low engine load operating at 30% or less? To me, and again, you guys know I'm a civil engineer, not a mechanical engineer, but to me the answers are pretty much the same, that fuel quality will absolutely impact engine efficiency. Running an engine at low loads can cause a myriad of issues leading to accumulation of deposits, and all sorts of other problems and issues that come about. Today, we'll be discussing how to select the right oil for natural gas engines to help minimize the impact of changing fuel quality and low engine loads. Our guest is Howard Soule, Senior Sales Manager from Petro-Canada Lubricants. Welcome to The Energy Pipeline Podcast, Howard.

00:02:34 Howard Soule
Okay, thank you. I come from pretty humble beginnings. I grew up on dairy farm, but it was good. It taught me how to work hard and I spent most of my life in sales and working with automotive, automotive electronics and heavy equipment. I've been in the oil and lubricants industry for about 15 years, five years of that I've been working with Petro-Canada Lubricants. My focus for the 15 years in lubricants has all been around midstream compression and transmission gathering, and trying to improve the performance of these engines through proper oil selection and improving total cost of operation.

00:03:32 KC Yost
Excellent. Now, you said dairy farm, so you are just outside of Harrisburg, PA, right?

00:03:38 Howard Soule
That's correct. I grew up in Pennsylvania, spent my whole life in Pennsylvania.

00:03:42 KC Yost
Yeah, there you go. So, the epitome of hillside farming, right?

00:03:49 Howard Soule
That's correct. Pennsylvania's where oil was originally discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and most people don't realize that the discovery of oil is probably what saved the whale. When they discovered oil in Pennsylvania, no longer did they need oil from whale and whale blubber.

00:04:12 KC Yost
Good history lesson, absolutely.

00:04:14 Howard Soule
Yeah.

00:04:15 KC Yost
Good, good. So, what are the major operating parameters that affect oil selection?

00:04:22 Howard Soule
Okay, so when you're looking at natural gas engines, one thing that's very unique about the operation of natural gas engine, they operate very different from a gasoline engine or a diesel engine. They're operating at much higher temperatures, and there's a wide range of fuel qualities that they have to operate under, and also you'll see varied loads. Unlike a diesel engine or a gasoline engine, the natural gas engines should be operating typically and operate best at 80%, 90%, 100% load. Current conditions in the oil field, aging wells have a lot of engines operating at 60% that create some very unique conditions when trying to lubricate an engine.

00:05:22 KC Yost
Okay, all right, so with those issues and noting the difference between a natural gas engine versus a diesel or a net gasoline engine, you start getting into fuel quality as an issue when it comes to oil selection?

00:05:48 Howard Soule
That's correct. So some of the things that are very different with fuel quality is the makeup, and you have more than just what is considered natural gas or methane. So, methane content can vary dramatically from fuel supply to fuel supply. Of course, the fuel's being pulled typically from a well, it's not always pipeline quality, and-

00:06:16 KC Yost
No, really?

00:06:18 Howard Soule
Yeah, which I've seen BTUs that vary greatly as well. When you look at fuel makeup, not only do you have methane, but you have a lot of hydrocarbons, sometimes propane, butane, hydrogen, hexane, just to name a few of contents of fuel that have a big impact on BTU. They have a big impact on flame speed, how quickly that hydrocarbon burns, and also a lot of those other products in that fuel, it will impact ignition temps. So you start seeing fuel burning faster, igniting prematurely and creating a lot of different issues and also burning at much higher BTU values than methane. You have a basic understanding of how combustion and combustion timing work, it creates a lot of issues.

00:07:30 KC Yost
Excellent. I think I understand what you're talking about. Very good. Remember, I'm a civil engineer.

00:07:37 Howard Soule
Sure.

00:07:37 KC Yost
So you mentioned, earlier you talked about engine loads and how most natural gas engines like to operate at 80%, 90%, 100% of load, and you were talking about 60%. It seems to me I've heard of engines operating in the 30% load. Is that getting too far down then? Can you talk about the impact of the low load two engine operation?

00:08:11 Howard Soule
I do have engines operating that I'm aware of in the US that are... in Michigan, that we have some very old wells up there and they're operating at 30%. When you get into lower loads, you start in having a lot of issues, because there's a butterfly valve in the exhaust that opens up and you start having decreased combustion pressures. Whenever that combustion pressure decreases, you have a imbalance between the sump pressure and the combustion pressures, and as a result, you lose oil control. What happens whenever that occurs is you start to see too much oil bypassing the rings, and then you also see too much oil bypassing the valves and the valve guides, so that excess of oil ends up being exposed to excessive heat, which contributes to building carbon. A lot of times and most of the time there'll be an adjustment to timing to help increase combustion temps and combustion pressures, and that can also help contribute to carbon forming and deposit forming. As you get excessive carbon build up, it traps heat, attracts carbon, it will tend to plug up the ring grooves so rings don't seat properly, and whenever rings don't seat properly, that can increase where you can have carbon breaking off of the piston and getting between the piston and the piston liner that can also help to remove the cross-hatching that helps control oil flow as well. One of the big challenges in a natural gas engine is lubricating the valves and protecting the valves from premature wear, and that is done with ash, and so we run a low ash oil in a lot of the engines that are being lubricated. Too much ash on a valve seat, on a valve face will build up, and then a piece will break off and you can have valve torching that leads to premature wear and premature head loss and valve failure, and too little won't give you enough cushion when you're trying to protect the valves. So when you lose oil control and you have too much oil flooding into the valves, that impacts head life and wear, and you also see, in many cases, carbon building up on the valves as a result of low load and loss of oil control, and I think that's probably the main concern. You can counteract some of this with an oil that has better thermal stability. Better thermal stability in an oil will help maintain viscosity, and when you're exposed to higher heats from advancing timing and maybe gas temperature, BTU values, a better thermal stability, again, maintains viscosity so it doesn't bypass rings and go into places where it shouldn't at the same rate, and it also doesn't form carbon as quickly as a lower quality base oil will.

00:12:19 KC Yost
So if I'm Joe Blow engineer designing a new compressor facility, and I know that the cubic feet that I'm pushing today is going to increase tenfold, twentyfold or whatever in the next number of years, it's smart for me to look at having X number of smaller compressors in series at this compressor site, so that as my throughput increases, I can bring the next compressor online to try and maintain a higher load on each compressor as you add them, so that you don't end up with the issues of lubricating oils and all sorts of problems coming online. As compared to putting in a compressor that is going to handle the entire anticipated load three years down the road, but is operating at 30%, 40%, 50% load capacity at the outset.

00:13:44 Howard Soule
I'm not really an expert on sizing and planning compressors, but what I do know is that the engine works better under high load than low load. As wells age, typically the performance of those wells tend to go down, and that is a lot of the reason for engines operating at low loads. There's a lot of ways that you can artificially increase load. Load on the engine does have a big impact on emissions, and I really can't comment on the planning of what compressors you should use related to pipeline.

00:14:30 KC Yost
Okay. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, well, just seemed to make sense to me. Anyway, we'll table that then. So, now engine manufacturer and model number affect oil performance as well, correct?

00:14:47 Howard Soule
That's correct. So when you look at the different engines that are out there, you have lean-burn, you have rich-burn engines, you have engines that have a relatively small sump compared to the horsepower of that engine, and you have certain makes and models that do better than others. As a result, when you're getting your rich-burn, your lean-burn, you have higher combustion temperatures that all have an impact on oil heat as oil is exposed to heat. Same way with metal, it breaks it down quicker, and it's one of the key factors in determining what oil you should use. There are models that I recommend always a premium product, and then there are models that are really easy on oil, and it all has to do with is it a rich-burn, is it a lean-burn, how big is the sump, and just the general design of the engine.

00:15:57 KC Yost
Got it, got it. So there are a number of components, variables, if you will, that go into selecting the right lubricating oil for that application and that engine? Makes sense.

00:16:12 Howard Soule
That's correct. Some engines will use more oil than others. They're prone to... every natural gas engine by design and the way that they need to lubricate the valves, the high temps of the combustion use oil on a daily basis. You can call it makeup oil, I call it daily consumption. So engines will use anywhere from a half gallon, some are using three, four or five gallons a day, depending on what stage of life that engine's in and what kind of oil you're running in it, and again, make and model. So, there are oils out there that will also help reduce that daily consumption that will have a huge impact on cost of operation of the engine.

00:17:09 KC Yost
Gotcha. So, how can oil selection mitigate these issues that we've been talking about?

00:17:17 Howard Soule
One of the big things is the base oil and the molecule, and they're... when you get into your higher quality base oils, you have better thermal stability, and we talked a little about thermal stability and maintaining viscosity. So in the ring area, piston ring area, 90% of your daily oil consumption happens in that area. So, a base oil with better thermal stability will maintain its viscosity in the area where it's exposed to heat, greater heat than any other place in the engine, so less oil will bypass the rings, less oil will be burnt and consumed. Then 10% of that oil is going to the valves, and you need a certain amount of oil going to the valves to make sure that you have proper ash content to protect the valves and the valve seats and the head. When you're looking at base oil and oils in general, you'll see different levels of coking depending on the quality of base oil, you'll see a higher Noack volatility. These are all lab things that can be demonstrated. Film strength will be better, so you'll handle loads better, you'll have better metal-to-metal protection so you have less wear over time. A premium oil has better lubricity based on the design of the molecule, you'll have less friction in the engine, you'll have a better pour point, better pumpability. There's a lot of things that come from a better quality base oil to help that engine perform better and have a better total cost of operation.

00:19:15 KC Yost
So, now the industry has oils defined in categories or groups, right?

00:19:22 Howard Soule
That's correct.

00:19:24 KC Yost
Can you share that with me? I mean, we're just talking about the base oils right now, but there are different qualities of oil just in base oil, right?

00:19:33 Howard Soule
Yeah, there's-

00:19:34 KC Yost
Am I saying that right?

00:19:35 Howard Soule
That is correct. There's group one... in engine oil, there's really four groups, group one, group two, and group three and group four. Most of the engines' oils being used right now, the majority are at group two. There are some oils that are group ones that have very, very similar characteristics. Sometimes they have better control of carbon and clean engines up better than maybe a group two will, and sometimes the variation and difference is something as little as sulfur content. But as you get into your group threes and group fours, you get into a much higher quality. There are very few products on the market right now and very few people using a group three and group four, most people are using a group two. But as you step up, some of the benefits, again, reduction in daily consumption, extending drain interval, extension of head life, extension of frame life, reduction in fuel consumption. Typically, reduction in fuel consumption a lot of times is associated with reduction in emissions. Also in situations where you're doing cold starts, you will have better performance in cold start and can start at a lower temperature without damaging the engine. As you jump up, you generally go into a more expensive product as far as the cost per gallon.

00:21:15 KC Yost
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So, now that's the base oil that you've got. You and I visited a little bit, I'm truly a child of the'60s and I knew Andy Granatelli and Mario Andretti, or at least I saw them on television and they were promoting STP for a gasoline additive and all of that, but you have the same concept for lubricating oils, right? You have additives that you can add to these base oils to make them perform better?

00:21:55 Howard Soule
Well, as a manufacturer of lubricants, we have a balanced formulation that has been tested and proven to provide performance. I don't ever recommend adding additives to our lubricants or any of the manufactured lubricants. They're designed to perform at a certain level and when you start adding outside additives, that can possibly lead to problems. But additives are very important, and having an additive technology that is advanced, not everybody is using advanced technology. A balanced formulation is also very important, especially when you're talking about ash content. I believe when you're talking about ash, a lot of it comes from calcium, magnesium, zinc, and there are different qualities of calcium and additive that have a huge impact on catalyst life, valve life. Also, some of the other additives are antioxidant treatments to make sure that oil lasts longer. In this segment, not all oils are created equal. There are very, very different performance characteristics as you switch from brand to brand and product to product. Of course there's some detergents in there, some people are putting pour point enhancers and other things, but again, everybody has a different goal when they're manufacturing oil. Petro-Canada's goal has always been to have a very high performing product. Our product was developed in Canada and it was designed to operate at very low cold temperatures, which very difficult when you're starting an engine at cold temperature to get oil to where it needs to be to protect it. But then we also in Canada have 80, 90 degree summers, so that oil has to operate at a very high temperature too, so additive is very important combined with the group oil to make a product that performs good.

00:24:30 KC Yost
Got it, got it. That's clear to me now, thank you. Thank you very much. So, let's talk about carbon buildup and all of that. I think it's fairly obvious to anyone that's worked on any kind of engine that carbon buildup is not good to an engine. Can you relay that and how does it impact engine performance?

00:24:57 Howard Soule
So we've talked a little bit about low load, that creates a lot of carbon typically, and also fuel quality can do the same thing. Carbon, what we call carbon, it's a byproduct of combustion due to incomplete fuel combustion, and includes silica, an additive, and oil,'cause oil's a carbon-based product. Carbon creates a lot of issues in an engine, and again, carbon attracts carbon. Carbon disrupts air flow in the combustion chamber, carbon will create concentration of fuel in areas that create hotspots that help to break down an engine and have it not last as long. Same thing with oil, it impacts oil as well. You don't see this as much in gasoline engines or diesel engines because of the nature of the temperatures in the combustion chamber and the need to lubricate the valves, so you have this natural blow by that's occurring. I kind of got off-track there a little bit, KC.

00:26:33 KC Yost
No, it's all good. No, it's all good.

00:26:35 Howard Soule
Okay, okay.

00:26:35 KC Yost
No, I like it. I like it, I like it.

00:26:40 Howard Soule
Okay-

00:26:40 KC Yost
So at the end of the day, carbon is not good and you can select the right oil to help minimize carbon buildup. Is that a fair statement?

00:26:52 Howard Soule
That's correct. Some of the problems with carbon buildup is it starts to plug the ring grooves and starts to build up on the piston. Sometimes you'll have pieces of carbon break off and it'll go down between the liner and the piston and it'll start to create wear in the cross-hatching. Also, rings that aren't seated properly will let more oil bypass, and more heat being trapped, again, contributes to loss of viscosity and more oil bypass, which increases consumption. I talk a lot about oil consumption and not everybody looks at oil consumption when they're talking about natural gas engine oil. Everybody looks at what's your drain interval, but oil consumption is a big factor in cost of operation. If you could take and cut consumption by managing carbon down from three gallons to a gallon and a half, that could cut your oil purchasing in half during the course of the year and save you a lot of money. While also with a better quality oil, managing some of the wear things that are going on in the engine that allow you to extend the frame life, head life of that engine also.

00:28:29 KC Yost
So at the end of the day, what I'm hearing you say is sometimes it's better to spend a little bit more per gallon for oil, if you will, to spend more money there, because you'll save money in the long run through the operation because of the less oil that will be lost or destroyed, or sent down the pipeline if you select a lesser quality oil?

00:29:02 Howard Soule
That's exactly right. It's easy to figure out what your costs are when you're looking at price per gallon. It's a little bit more difficult to look at total cost of operation where you start to take into consideration not only the cost per gallon, 'cause that is important factor, but how much are you consuming daily? Because different oils will have different consumption rates. What is my drain interval? Am I draining every three months or can I stretch this out to a year, or maybe longer? Then you start also figuring in things like valve recession, head life, how many hours am I getting out of my head? Some of the things like measuring frame life, that takes a very long time to figure out whether your oil has saved you any money in frame life, because that's going to take you five, six, seven, maybe more years. But there's a whole lot of factors that you'd considered whenever you're looking at total cost of operation versus cost per gallon.

00:30:11 KC Yost
Gotcha, gotcha. So, let's throw a wrinkle in there and talk about turbochargers. Does that affect the selection of oil?

00:30:20 Howard Soule
I think it does. Recently I'm hearing more and more about turbochargers having issues and a lot of it is oil-related, and whenever I have discussions with people, we talked about lower loads, and as lower loads come in, you lose oil control. That oil is going out the exhaust valve, some of that oil or oil vapor is going to the turbo. I've heard of people having additive and carbon buildup in the housing where the impeller is, and that has caused premature failure, which costs you not only the cost of tearing that engine off in labor, but also downtime. So, that's one part of it. The other part is most of the people that I know run a turbocharged engine personally in a car or some type of vehicle, they're running a premium product, and then I see the fleets out there that all have turbos on and people are running the cheapest oil they can put in that engine. Some of the problems come when, and I hear this from many people, they have to do an on-plan shutdown of an engine, and all of a sudden they lose the circulation of oil and that turbo is running at a super high temperature. What happens to that oil whenever it's trapped and staying there exposed to that high temp? If it has low thermal stability because you bought a really cheap oil, what does that do to the overall term of the turbo? Just naturally lubricating a turbo, you have very high speed bearings there, and if you have a low quality oil that doesn't have the thermal stability, doesn't have the lubricity, that can also help to shorten the life of a turbo. This is more and more of a thing that's being discussed out there in the field. Why are my turbos not lasting as long as they could? I know oil selection can help.

00:32:45 KC Yost
Oh, great, super. So, you're a wealth of knowledge and I've absolutely enjoyed this conversation and I've probably got a dozen more questions running through my head right now that I'd like to discuss, but we're running out of time, so may I just ask if there's anything else you would like to add, some points that you might want to drive home to the people that are listening?

00:33:14 Howard Soule
Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about ash and ash content. Most of us are running a low ash product in our engines out there, most companies are, and there are varying levels of ash as you look at specific engines. Ash content, you're running a higher BTU value, you're running lower loads, you have oil control loss. I think it's important to ensure head life and ash content to look at the fuel quality, look at the load of the engine, look at the engine make and model. We can help people do that so that you select the right oil. We talked a little bit about low loads and engines operating at 30%. I've got people that are running Cat engines, they should be running low ash oil. Because of the really low loads and the loss of oil control, they're running on ashless or lower in between no ash and low ash product to help maintain the proper amount of ash on the valves, seats and faces so there's not premature failure. So-

00:34:33 KC Yost
Yeah, just to interject, you had said earlier that some ash is good, but you can have too much ash, correct?

00:34:43 Howard Soule
That's correct.

00:34:44 KC Yost
Okay.

00:34:45 Howard Soule
A lot of things, again, BTU value of the fuel, load of the engine can have an impact on what ash content we select for that engine. We have these general specs that are cookie cutter meet all, but with a little bit of investigation and looking at a fuel analysis and looking at some of the operational details of the engine, we can make some recommendations, and that will help make sure that your fleet or engines run the way they should and you get the most life out of the heads, frames, et cetera.

00:35:25 KC Yost
Sweet. Okay, good deal, good deal. All right, well, we are running out of time, so I want to thank you guys for taking the time to visit with us today. Understand we're just scratching the surface here. If anyone wants to get in touch with Howard or Garrett and want to learn more about the right lubricants for the right application, you can learn more and get in touch with them at their website, petrocanadalubricants.com. That's petrocanadalubricants.com. So, thanks to all of you for tuning into this episode of The Energy Pipeline Podcast sponsored by Caterpillar Oil & Gas. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for podcast topics, feel free to email me at kc.yost@oggn.com. Also, want to thank my producer, Anastasia Willison-Duff, and everyone at the Oil & Gas Global Network for making this podcast possible. Find out more about other OGGN podcasts at oggn.com. This is KC Yost saying goodbye for now. Have a great week and keep that energy flowing through the pipeline.

00:36:40 Speaker 5
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