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Running To Stand Still: Natural Gas and Diesel Power Generation Markets

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Irrigation Market
The agriculture market is a big one for many engine builders because of the variety and complexity of machinery most farmers use on a daily basis. In Kansas, for example, our experts say farmers run their natural gas units 24/7 about 4 months of the year for about 2,500 hours a year, and they’re running them hard. “They’re pumping a lot of water,” says Evans. “In Western Kansas alone, just with gaseous fuels not diesel, there are more than 13,000 engines in operation. In Nebraska, there are over 55,000 engines being used for irrigation. That’s just two states. My background is more or less in the oil and gas market but I’ve been absolutely amazed by the number of units in the irrigation market. It far exceeds the oil and gas industry.”

According to Evans, most farmers don’t need a diesel engine for their equipment and can actually save money with an alternative fueled unit. “Most farmers irrigate anywhere between 1,500 and 2,500 hours a year. You’re not going to get as much longevity out of a natural gas engine as you would a diesel engine but for the minimal amount of hours that they’re using it, with good maintenance, they’ll still get 10 years out of it. And it’ll be half the cost of a comparable diesel engine to begin with.”

Of course, there are still some irrigation and farming customers who prefer diesel, according to Snyder, mainly because propane may not be readily available. “They may not have a natural gas line near enough to hook into – it might be almost cost prohibitive to trench lines to bring in natural gas in some cases.”

However, in nearly all cases there’s a natural gas supply within a mile or two of where the farmers want it. And often times it doesn’t seem to be tremendously expensive to trench it in. “I talked to one of our customers who said it only cost him about $5,000 to trench about a mile,” says Evans. “When you figure the dramatic fuel savings of gas vs. diesel you’ll pay off that $5,000 pretty quickly.”

Oil and Gas Industry
There are some applications in the oil patch where a diesel engine is necessary, according to our experts. “If there’s a lot of heavy motor starting, they need the extra torque of a diesel engine,” Evans explains. “There might be a 24/7 year round operation and with 8,000 hours a year running an engine it would make more sense with a diesel because you’ll get 30,000-40,000 hours out of it before you have to rebuild it.”

A natural gas engine only has about half of the longevity of a diesel. There’s always a trade off, say experts. “Most of the time in the oil and gas industry they prefer to use a gas engine because a lot of times your typical pump jack, the donkey that goes up and down pumping oil out of the ground, so whenever you pump oil you get natural gas,” says Evans. “It’s free energy to those guys.”