Case Study: Marathon Oil improves power reliability and plant safety with SEL protective relays

Value of Digital Protective Relays Is Discovered at Oil and Gas Facility

Marathon Oil, an oil and gas producer operating the Yates Field and Indian Basin gas plants in Texas and New Mexico, was struggling with unreliable power service, frequent breaker trips, and aging electromechanical relays that made it hard to diagnose faults or maintain process stability. With production and safety at risk every time the power system misbehaved, Marathon Oil turned to Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) and its SEL-351 relays to improve protection and monitoring at its on-site generation and switchgear.

SEL replaced unreliable relays with SEL-351 relays, added SEL-300G generator protection relays at Yates, and worked with Marathon Oil on careful planning, installation, and programming during scheduled shutdowns. The result was a four-fold improvement in the trip index at Yates, dropping from nearly 1.0 to about 0.25, along with better visibility into root causes, fewer costly outages, improved generator efficiency, and remote monitoring that helped Marathon Oil identify and fix issues before they caused shutdowns.

Marathon Oil

Charlie Adams

Senior Engineer