Natural Gas Powered Transit

In today’s world with fuel prices rising almost hourly, large metropolitan centers are contemplating new cost-cutting ideas for public transportation while keeping the transit riding populace happy and on time. Buses and trains powered by electricity have proven to be an advantageous option for many cities in the Northwest United States, especially in Washington State with their ability to keep the price of electricity affordably low due to their cache of dams on large rivers such as the Columbia. But electric buses and trains are bound to areas where there exist lines or rails, of course, and for passengers outside of downtown areas, other options have had to be considered. Overwhelmingly, compressed natural gas has come to the fore as the cleanest burning, least expensive alternative, and its abundance in the United States, has made it the overwhelming choice of transit companies around the country.

Pierce Transit, just south of Seattle in the Tacoma, Washington area touts itself as a company committed to their “Clean Machines”. Their fleet of compressed natural gas powered buses reduces nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide emissions by ninety percent versus their diesel-powered cousins. The buses also produce no soot or other particulates; diesel buses emit a gallon of soot into the atmosphere for every 570 miles traveled. Not only are these buses better for the air; they produce less noise pollution as well. Neighborhoods are much quieter thanks to the new natural gas buses, though perhaps one could miss the bus due to its quieter cruising ability through cul-de-sac-ville! Pierce Transit owns and operates several fast-fill compressor stations that have the ability to refuel three buses simultaneously in less than ten minutes. Also, instead of requiring the purchase of all new buses, Pierce Transit chose to convert their existing fleet to natural gas power, cutting more costs that would have definitely trickled down to the riders if new bus expenditures had proved necessary.

Pierce Transit has been lauded by agencies across the country including the American Lung Association, the Natural Gas Vehicle Association, the American Gas Association, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The U.S. Department of Energy bestowed upon Pierce Transit the prestigious Clean Cities National Partner Award, for their commitment to clean burning fuel. Pierce Transit was one of the first public transportation fleets in the entire U.S. to convert to these “clean machines”. Natural Gas refining and distribution outfits like Triple Diamond Energy Corp continue to explore and extract the natural gas integral to keeping large transportation fleets such as Pierce Transit’s up and running.

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.

Changing your Motorcycle’s Oil

One of the most basic procedures of routine motorcycle maintenance each owner should be able to perform has to be changing the engine oil. When done properly, and at scheduled intervals, it can help your motorcycle perform at its top ability, providing a reliable source of transportation and enjoyment for many years.

After consulting your motorcycle manual and purchasing the particular grade of oil and oil filter recommended for your bike, find a nice level spot, perhaps in your garage or driveway and have about 15 minutes to perform the deed. You’ll need a few basic tools including the correct socket wrench to remove your drain plug, a filter wrench you probably picked up at your motorcycle shop when getting the oil, and a new drain plug crush washer to replace the one you’ll remove. You’ll also need the proper receptacle, sealable preferably, to catch the oil as it drains, so you can properly dispose of it later.

Now it’s time to get down to business. Put your bike on the side stand, rear stand, or center stand and slide your drain pan under your drain plug bolt, keeping in mind that it will shoot out at first, so be ready to maneuver for a good catch! Now, remove the drain plug, and let the oil drain into the pan. Allow all the oil to drain before attempting to remove the filter. You can now use your filter wrench, or your leather belt if you’ve been thrifty, to grip that filter and carefully turn it counter-clockwise for removal, paying close attention not to dent or damage the filter to prevent any of the dirty oil from creeping back in your engine. After all the oil has drained from the plug and the filter cavity, put your new washer on the drain bolt to ensure a proper seal, and reinstall the drain bolt, taking care not to overtighten it.

Prep your oil filter by filling it about a quarter full with fresh oil, and clean the contact area on filter and bike. Now apply a little dab of oil on your finger and run it over the entire seal of the filter just to help with installation and your next removal. Now just screw the filter into place by hand, no need for the wrench. Check your manual for the capacity of your engine and start adding the proper amount of oil. When you get to about a half quart under that amount, check the oil, remembering that it has to be vertical, not on the side stand to get a proper reading. Add more until it reads between “add” and “full”, put the oil cap back on and you’re finished!

All that’s left to do is to transport your used oil to a filling station or oil change retailer so that a refining company like Triple Diamond Energy Corp can perform the necessary steps for recycling your oil. Now wasn’t that easy, and you saved some hard earned cash too!

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com

LPG: A Solution to Vietnam’s Pollution Problems

In highly populated Vietnam, whose small landmass of 330,000 square kilometers holds 78 million people, a major concern has always been transportation. Efficient and inexpensive, scooters and motorbikes have become the most popular way of movement of many inhabitants of the large metropolitan centers. The downside of this trend is the environmental effects of pollution generated primarily from the scores of small, mainly two stroke engines that can emit as much or more exhaust as 3 large semi trucks. Two stroke engine powered vehicles burn an oil-gasoline mixture, emitting more smoke, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter than their four stroke cousins. Unfortunately these engines are cheaper to buy and easier to maintain. In Hochiminh city, much to the chagrin of clean air proponents, many city dwellers have set up their own independent “baby taxis” by simply adding sidecars to their small motorbikes and scooters. This makes the dirty two stroke engines work even harder, because of their insufficient power to carry 2 or more passengers, belching out even more exhaust than ever.

The World Health Organization has been urging these highly populated cities to monitor and regulate these environmentally harmful vehicles because as air pollution grows worse and worse, increasing numbers of the inhabitants are infected with respiratory illness, overloading hospitals, and increasing the mortality rate. Legislators have tried to limit the number of motorbikes and scooters, but new research has shown that a more realistic alternative would be a simple modification of the motorbike and scooter population to run on a cleaner burning fuel. This fuel is Liquefied Petroleum Gas, or LPG.

LPG is a mixture of propane and butane; the simple makeup of these two gases fuse beautifully into one of the cleanest burning fuel alternatives available today. The large tanked scooters that are so prevalent in Vietnam could be retrofitted to house an LPG tank underneath their seats instead of the gasoline tanks that are currently present. LPG powered engines or hybrid LPG and gasoline-powered engines are cleaner burning not only for the environment but within the engines as well. Engine durability and longevity is increased because LPG does not create the particulate or soot created in the two-stroke gasoline engines, allowing the cylinders and pistons to be mostly corrosion free. These engines also burn less oil as well, making lubrication of the moving parts easier and longer lasting.

Companies such as Triple Diamond Energy Corp are adept at extracting and distributing the necessary natural gas for fueling these clean burning vehicles, helping to ensure a safer environment today and in the future.

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.

Choosing Your Motorcycle’s Oil

Choosing the oil for your motorcycle’s engine is an important task every owner is faced with when performing an oil change as part of his or her successful preventative maintenance routine. This article will detail different situations to keep in mind when making this choice, in easy to follow language, so all owners can make this choice with confidence, and get back to the fun part, riding, with the peace of mind having taken an integral step towards ensuring the motorcycle’s reliability for many future joy-giving rides.

Oil’s importance in the motorcycle engine is twofold. It provides the lubrication necessary so that all metal parts move together in harmony without ever grinding on each other in a “metal on metal” situation. Oil also performs its duty as a cooling agent, keeping the engine from overheating which can cause permanent damage, especially in an engine that revs as high as a motorcycle’s. Changing a motorcycle’s oil on a regular basis ensures that the oil in the engine continues to fulfill its function and does not perform inadequately because of age and impurities acquired over many miles.

Before changing your oil, it is important to find out what brand/viscosity/type of oil is already in use in the engine. It is advisable to maintain a continuity of brand/grade of oil in your engine unless a move to a different climate demands a different grade. A heavier grade of oil could be needed in a colder climate to provide increased cold starting ability, whereas a lighter grade could be adequate in a more amiable climate. Also something to keep in mind is the type of riding you are doing on your bike. Racing a bike requires more oil changes and a racing type motor oil would be advisable because of its increased cooling ability at the high temperatures present in the engine when racing. For simple recreational riding or commuting, this increased performance oil is really not necessary. Excellent providers such as Triple Diamond Energy Corp supply the refined oil that goes into many top brands of motorcycle oil used in all sorts of riding applications.

The best resource for finding the type of oil needed for a particular make and model of motorbike continues to be the motorcycle’s service or user’s manual. Every new bike bought and sold should include a user’s manual, and if the bike is bought secondhand, the purchaser should be able to find a copy of the user’s manual on the Internet. If not, it is advisable to purchase a shop manual such as ones made by Clymer or Chilton. Even if your bike came with a user manual, these shop manuals are an excellent resource when attempting minor and even extensive repairs.

About the Author: Chris Jent is the chief marketing officer of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.

Automotive Oil in Your Motorcycle Engine: What’s the Difference?

If you peruse the shelves of your local motorcycle dealer or specialty shop, it won’t be long until you notice the many choices of motorcycle specific oil, all claiming to be “best engineered for the extreme needs of your motorcycle engine”. You’ll also be sure to notice that the motorcycle oil costs on average between 200-300% more than its automotive counterpart. Are motorcycle oil and automotive oil truly that different, and would one be a fool to put automotive oil in their high-revving motorcycle engine?

Oil companies hawking their motorcycle specific motor oil have been stating the same claims for decades, but could their research back it up? Motorcycle oil manufacturers claim that their oils possess better lubricating properties and retain their viscosity for longer periods and over more miles because they are infused with much more expensive, shear-stable polymers and additives than in most everyday automotive oils. This might have been true when the large automotive engines of the 1970s were the norm, but today, most cars possess smaller engines, higher-revving four-cylinder and six-cylinder engines that have demanded improvements in automotive oil that bring them mostly inline with motorcycle oil when looking at their ingredients. These new automotive oils have been formulated to perform better in today’s smaller engines that are more like the engines in their two-wheeled cousins than ever. Another claim made by motorcycle specific oil manufactures is that since automobiles have begun using catalytic converters (not standard in most motorcycles), laws have limited the amounts of anti-wear agents, namely phosphorous, in automotive oil. It is true that motorcycle oils have a slightly higher concentration of phosphorous in their products, but the concentrations are still below government mandated levels, making them able for use in many new converter equipped models made by companies such as BMW and Yamaha.

The largest claim made by motorcycle oil companies involves viscosity retention. Again, they claim the larger amounts of shear-stable polymers better resist the excruciating punishment dealt by highly efficient, high-revving motorcycle engines. Many tests have been run pitting automotive oil against motorcycle oil concerning this very matter. When analyzing the data, one finds that amongst synthetic motor oils, motorcycle-specific and automotive-specific possessing petroleum derived additives to help prevent viscosity breakdown, the automotive specific blends as a whole outperform their motorcycle oil counterparts in the motorcycle engines for which they were designed! Perhaps the only conclusion to be drawn is that motorcycle oil is marketed towards a much smaller market of consumers, and thus is priced much higher. The truth is the higher cost is not reflected so much in higher quality but in the smaller quantity required by that smaller market.

About the Author: Chris Jent is the chief marketing officer of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.

Natural Gas Piped to the U.K.

Because of its relatively small land mass and few deposits, the United Kingdom, more than other European companies, imports an inordinate amount of its natural gas from neighboring countries so that its population can comfortably heat their homes and power industries. The “neighbor” the United Kingdom reached an amiable trade agreement with just happened to be, not just across the pond, but, in fact, under the sea. The U.K. will be getting a large share of its natural gas from Norway, many miles across the frigid Baltic Sea.

This engineering marvel was quite an undertaking by the Norwegian oil company, Norsk Hydro. Their hopes were to connect their massive discovery, the Ormen Lange undersea gas field, to oil processing and refining plants in Britain. The pipeline, at its completion, would hope to carry 20% of Britain’s necessary gas supplies each year, and provide a stable, reliable supply for at least the next 40 years. Construction proved to be an enormous endeavor. The need to work, in some areas, at over a mile beneath the sea’s chilly, windswept surface, called for cutting edge technology. One of the advanced techniques employed because of the ruggedness of the ocean floor involved two remote control robots. These robots performed the necessary excavation duties in order to prepare the ocean floor for the piping. Deep, dark, and chilly, of course, but let’s not forget that at the deepest part, 2953 feet beneath the surface, the water pressure, exceeding 1500 psi would crush a human skull. Of course divers in a mini-sub or bell could do the job, but why waste the energy when there are remote controlled robots about? The enormous lengths of pipes were of course assembled above the surface. This required two of the world’s largest pipe-laying ships, working in tandem, assembling pipes and continuously laying them on the ocean floor.

Norsk Hydro obviously felt the risk and exertion of mind power and bank accounts was well worth it because the pipeline opened in 2006, and has been pumping its crude between Norway and the U.K. since then. The length of the pipeline is 746 miles in its entirety, and was assembled in two great sections. The cost of the project was 3.3 billion dollars and received financial backing from several companies, including Centrica, Statoil, Norsk Hydro, Royal Dutch Shell, and Conoco Phillips. The total annual capacity of the Langeled Pipeline is around 70 billion cubic feet of natural gas, supplying a fifth of Britain’s need.

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.

Russia and Algeria: Natural Gas Partners?

Natural gas price fluctuation in different areas is directly associated with the number of suppliers and distributors that are competing for shares of the market. Much in the same way that filling stations jockey for interchangeably lower prices one week and higher prices the next, large natural gas purveyors compete with each other for their consumers’ dollars. This competition is healthy and helps to create a healthier economy with more honest, realistic pricing because of different companies keeping each other in check. When companies band together and coordinate their prices, all competition is gone and the threat of skyrocketing prices is a very realistic one.

Russia controls over a quarter of the world’s gas reserves. No other single country possesses as many large fertile gas fields. Presently, however, Russia is experiencing a bit of a squeeze. The natural gas rich nation seems to have been overextending itself in exporting natural gas to other countries in the last decade, while needs at home have been exponentially increasing. The Russian gas giant, Gazprom has found itself deeply in debt and taking all sorts of options into consideration to heal its woes. Perhaps that explained the drastic measure taken in April 2006. All of Europe watched anxiously as Russia and Algeria, Europe’s two largest suppliers of natural gas, entered into talks in 2006 to form an alliance between the two nation’s natural gas companies. The two powerhouses signed an agreement, a “memorandum of understanding”, calling for a coordination of gas prices, which could have inevitably driven up prices in Europe and beyond. Perhaps the cooperation of Algeria could help Russia more immediately by helping raise prices of gas across Europe and help Gazprom get back into the black. With Gazprom supplying 25% of the European Union’s natural gas needs and Algeria providing another 10%, some countries within the EU, such as Italy, for instance, would experience unavoidable situations where dependence upon Russia and Algeria combined would reach a whopping 72% of market share. Corruption would be inevitable and smaller countries would experience cold winters or empty pockets. Could Russia and Algeria actually work together to create a natural gas cartel in Europe?

Apparently not. Europe collectively breathed a sigh of relief this week when the union was rendered null and void and the collective agreement between the two state-owned gas companies was dissolved. The threat is still a viable one, however. Once two countries enter talks that would collectively make themselves richer, the lure is strong to return to the table again until an agreement sticks.

About the Author: Robert Jent is the president of Triple Diamond Energy Corp. Triple Diamond Energy specializes in acquiring the highest quality prime oil and gas properties. For more information, visit http://www.triplediamondenergycorp.blogspot.com.