Marine lubricants

Marine duty is its own environment

Marine and offshore lubrication combines conditions that rarely appear together elsewhere: continuous high load, salt-laden humid air, fuel quality that varies by bunker, long intervals between intervention, and a maintenance window dictated by weather and rotation rather than by a service schedule.

A product specified for road or general industrial duty can be entirely adequate on paper and unsuitable here, because it was never designed to hold its properties for the interval that offshore operation imposes.

What changes in the formulation

• Water tolerance. Demulsibility and corrosion protection against persistent humidity and salt ingress.
• Fuel compatibility. Reserve alkalinity matched to sulphur content that changes between bunkers.
• Extended interval stability. Oxidation resistance sized to a genuine offshore drain interval.
• Load behaviour. Film strength under continuous rather than intermittent duty.

Supply is half the problem

An offshore lubricant that is correct but unavailable is not correct. Supply has to be planned against the same rotation and logistics constraints that govern crew movements: the delivery window is the vessel window, and a missed one costs an interval.

The group is unusual in running both sides. We supply lubricants and we move offshore crews and materials, so the schedule assumptions in one business are informed by the other rather than assumed.

Specified against our own operations

These grades exist because the group’s oil and gas platform needed them. Being our own demanding customer first is the same pattern that produced SubseaCore in software, and it is the reason the range is narrow and deliberate rather than broad.