Oil & gas handbook

The definition points at a document you have to buy

The most precise federal definition of kerosene is in the excise-tax regulations, and it is worth reading in full because of where it sends you. 26 CFR 48.4081-1(b): “Kerosene means any liquid that meets the specifications for kerosene or would meet those specifications but for the presence in the liquid of a dye of the type described in § 48.4082-1(b). A liquid meets the specifications for kerosene if it is one of the two grades of kerosene (No. 1-K and No. 2-K) covered by ASTM specification D 3699, or kerosene-type jet fuel covered by ASTM specification D 1655 or military specification MIL-DTL-5624T (Grade JP-5) or MIL-DTL-83133E (Grade JP-8).”

So the two grades exist, they are named in federal law, and every attribute that separates them — the sulfur limit above all — lives in ASTM D3699, which is sold by ASTM International. Requested on September 12, 2026, the publisher’s page for it returned 403 to an unauthenticated client. It was not read for this guide, no limit from it is reproduced here, and this guide states no sulfur figure, flash point or Saybolt colour for either grade. If a purchase turns on K-1 rather than K-2, obtain the edition your specification invokes and cite its clauses by number; a buyer and a seller who have each never opened the document are agreeing to a set of limits neither of them can quote.

The same paragraph also defines an excluded liquid, which is a liquid that “contains less than four percent normal paraffins” or has a distillation range of 125 °F or less, a sulfur content of 10 ppm or less, and a minimum color of +27 Saybolt. A liquid can look like kerosene, sit next to it on a rack, and fall outside the definition on any one of those. Precision about what a material is is not pedantry here; it is the difference between two regulatory identities.

The colour in the drum is a tax fact

Dyed kerosene is a common sight and it is routinely misread as a quality signal. 26 CFR 48.4082-1 is short and says exactly what the dye means: tax is not imposed on the removal, entry or sale of diesel fuel or kerosene where the person otherwise liable is a taxable fuel registrant, the terminal is an approved terminal, and the fuel satisfies the dyeing requirement. That requirement is met only if the fuel contains “the dye Solvent Red 164 (and no other dye) at a concentration spectrally equivalent to at least 3.9 pounds of the solid dye standard Solvent Red 26 per thousand barrels of diesel fuel or kerosene,” or a dye of a type and concentration the Commissioner has approved.

That is the entire content of the colour. It records a tax status and a permitted use; it carries no information about sulfur, flash point, distillation, water and sediment, or anything else a specification controls. Undyed material is not therefore cleaner, and dyed material is not therefore dirtier. Neither is a substitute for the attribute limits, and a receiving record that notes “clear” or “red” has recorded a tax category rather than a property.

Kerosene is a designation somebody applied to a batch

EPA’s fuels rule treats the word as a label with a procedure behind it. 40 CFR 1090.80 defines kerosene as “any No. 1 distillate fuel that is used, intended for use, or made available for use as kerosene,” and distillate fuel as diesel and other petroleum fuels with a T90 temperature below 700 °F — a definition anchored to a distillation result, not a composition. § 1090.1015(a)(1) then requires a manufacturer to “accurately and clearly designate each batch” as at least one of nine listed types, kerosene among them, and § 1090.1100 requires that designation to travel on the product transfer document at each change of custody. The designation is a record with an owner, and it is the thing to ask for.

Two consequences are easy to get backwards. First, § 1090.1015(a)(3) allows a batch certified and designated as ULSD to also be designated kerosene “if it is also suitable for such use,” so a drum can honestly carry both labels — which means the label alone does not tell you which standard it was certified against. Second, and more often assumed wrongly: § 1090.315 states that kerosene “must not be sold for use in motor vehicles or nonroad equipment” and is “not subject to the ULSD standards in § 1090.305 unless it is also designated as ULSD.” The 15 ppm maximum sulfur content at § 1090.305(b) is a standard for diesel fuel. It is not a federal limit on kerosene, and a specification that needs a sulfur ceiling has to state one itself, with a method and a reporting limit.

What the material is, reported as ranges

The NIOSH Pocket Guide card for kerosene, CAS 8008-20-6, describes it as “a refined petroleum solvent (predominantly C9-C16), which typically is 25% normal paraffins, 11% branched paraffins, 30% monocycloparaffins, 12% dicycloparaffins, 1% tricycloparaffins, 16% mononuclear aromatics & 5% dinuclear aromatics.” Note the word typically, and note that the card gives boiling point as 347-617 °F, flash point as 100-162 °F, molecular weight as “170 (approx)” and specific gravity as 0.81 without a stated reference temperature. Those are the honest shape of the data for a distillation cut.

The flash-point range is the one with a purchasing consequence, because it spans a boundary. Under 29 CFR 1910.106(a)(19), a flammable liquid Category 3 runs to a flash point at or below 140 °F and Category 4 above 140 °F, so two lots of the same product, each legitimately kerosene, can classify differently. The classification of a delivery follows from the flash point of that delivery, measured by a stated method, and it is the employer’s determination and not a supplier’s. The general problem — that a petroleum cut has no single value for anything — is worked through in this library’s aerospace materials and cleanliness collection under “A petroleum cut is a range, not a substance,” and is not repeated here.

One product name in this collection contains the words “clean burning.” It is a name. This library makes no statement, and supports none, about the emissions, combustion behaviour or environmental characteristics of any fuel, and nothing here should be read as one.

The neighbouring cuts, and where their names collide

Mineral spirits sits beside kerosene in this collection and is the same kind of purchase. The NIOSH card for Stoddard solvent, CAS 8052-41-3, lists “Mineral spirits” among its synonyms and describes it as “a refined petroleum solvent with a flash point of 102-110 °F, boiling point of 309-396 °F, and containing >65% C10 or higher hydrocarbons,” with a physical description of “colorless liquid with a kerosene-like odor.” The two materials overlap in boiling range and in the way they are named, and they are not interchangeable on that account.

The exposure entries on that card show why a number needs its units and its basis. NIOSH gives a REL of 350 mg/m³ as a time-weighted average with a ceiling of 1800 mg/m³ over 15 minutes; the OSHA PEL on the same card is 500 ppm, given as 2900 mg/m³. Two authorities, two figures, and a substance whose molecular weight the card reports as “varies,” which is precisely why converting between ppm and mg/m³ here is not a clean arithmetic operation. None of these is a property of a purchased product: an exposure limit is an obligation on an employer, discharged by an assessment of the actual task, which no purchase document can supply.

• Which designation is being bought — K-1, K-2, a fuel-rule batch designation, or a producer’s cut — and which document defines it?
• What is the flash point of the material as delivered, by which method, and who made the classification determination that follows from it?
• Which attributes does your specification actually control, each with a limit, a method, units and a reporting limit?
• Does the transfer document carry the designation, and does it match what was ordered?

Ask for the document, and ask for the certificate

Alliance publishes the grade a product carries in its structured product data, and that record — not the marketing copy, and not the handle — is what a purchase document should quote. Where a grade is not stated for a product, the correct action is to ask rather than to infer one. A nominal designation or concentration does not establish interchangeability between products or between suppliers, and being merchandised under an oil and gas collection is merchandising: an industry listing is not an application approval.

Alliance sends a Certificate of Analysis when a customer asks, at no charge. Put the request in the purchase order and name what it must cover: the analytes, the methods, the units and the reporting limit for each. A typical or sample certificate describes what the product has generally looked like; a lot certificate reports results for the material being shipped, and the two are not the same document. This is source-based editorial guidance, no original testing was performed for it, and independent specialist review is pending. Nothing here states that a particular Alliance product is suitable, approved or recommended for any application.

Requirement → evidence → decision boundary

An editorial checklist for your review—not a table of product specifications.

The record disagrees with itself, and that is the lesson

Baumé is a hydrometer scale: a float reading, converted to a density, converted in turn to a concentration through a table. The aggregated public record for hydrogen chloride carries that conversion twice, and the two entries do not agree. One reads: “Grades: United States Pharmacopeia (35-38%); NF dilution (10%); technical (usually 18, 20, 22, 23 deg Be /baume/, corresponding to approx 28, 31, 35, 37% hydrogen chloride), FCC.” Another reads: “Available commercially as a 31% w/w (22 deg Baume, d: 1.16 kg/L) or 35% w/w (22 deg Baume, d: 1.18 kg/L) solution in water.” The first puts 20 °Bé at about 31 percent and 22 °Bé at about 35. The second assigns 22 °Bé to 31 percent and to 35 percent in the same sentence, at two different densities.

Neither entry is a measurement of a supplied lot, and this guide does not adjudicate between them. The point is the one a purchase document has to act on: a Baumé degree is not a concentration, it is a reading that becomes a concentration only through a stated table at a stated temperature, and the commercial usage is loose enough that a widely aggregated record contradicts itself. Write the weight percent, the basis, the reference temperature and the method on the order, and treat the Baumé figure as the trade shorthand it is. The same record does supply properly conditioned density data — 1.15 at 29.57 percent and 1.20 at 39.11 percent, both at 15 °C referred to water at 4 °C — which is what a conditioned number looks like.

The exposure card is written for the gas

The NIOSH Pocket Guide card most people reach for is “Hydrogen chloride,” CAS 7647-01-0, and it describes “a colorless to slightly yellow gas with a pungent, irritating odor,” shipped as a liquefied compressed gas, with a molecular weight of 36.5 and a boiling point of −121 °F. Its ceiling limit of 5 ppm, 7 mg/m³, is a limit on airborne hydrogen chloride, matched by OSHA in Table Z-1. The card notes the material is often used in an aqueous solution and gives DOT identifiers for both — 1050 for the anhydrous gas, 1789 for the solution — but the properties on it are the gas’s. Reading a boiling point of −121 °F off that card and applying it to a drum of 31 percent solution is the ordinary error.

What the card does supply for a purchase record is the materials question. It lists incompatibilities as “hydroxides, amines, alkalis, copper, brass, zinc,” with the note that hydrochloric acid “is highly corrosive to most metals.” Those belong in the wetted-materials field alongside the pump, hose, gasket and vent arrangement. This is also where an inhibited acid has to be handled carefully: an inhibitor is a formulation additive, and a statement that an acid is inhibited is a claim about evidence — which formulation, at what concentration, against which alloy, at what temperature, for how long, and measured how. This library treats that question at length in its HVAC and geothermal collection, under “A corrosion-inhibitor claim is a claim about evidence,” and does not repeat it. Nothing here states that any Alliance product is inhibited, or is suitable for contact with any specific metallurgy.

Three assays at one density

The sulfuric acid record makes the same point from the other direction. Its grade table reads: “Commercial 60 degrees Be: (density 1.71, 77.7% sulfuric acid); 66 degrees Be (density 1.84, 93.2% sulfuric acid); 98% (density 1.84); 99% (density 1.84); 100% (density 1.84), depending on supplier; reagent ACS, CP.” Three different assays are quoted at the same density, and the table itself says the difference is “depending on supplier.” At the concentrated end of this scale density stops resolving concentration, so a hydrometer reading cannot settle an argument about assay and a titration has to.

Two further entries matter for a diluted product. The impurity figures the record gives — “Non-volatiles, 0.02-0.03 ppm; SO2, 40-80 ppm; iron, 50-100 ppm; nitrate, 5-20 ppm” — are attached specifically to “technical grade, industry type, 66 deg Baume,” which is to say they describe one designation and do not transfer to a dilute solution. And on materials the record is explicit that concentration inverts the answer: “concentrated acid is non-corrosive to lead and mild steel but dilute acid attacks most metals,” with corrosiveness “highly dependent on concentration, temperature, acid velocity, and acid impurities.” A tank and transfer arrangement chosen for concentrated acid is not thereby justified for a dilute one. The same record carries “Battery acid” and “Sulphuric acid 37% techn. (battery acid, accumul. acid)” among its depositor-supplied synonyms, and separately reports a specific gravity of 1.84 explicitly qualified as “(96-98% acid)” — a figure that says nothing about a 37 percent solution. A synonym contributed by a depositor and a property measured under stated conditions are not the same class of evidence, and a record that holds both side by side will happily let you read one as the other.

Both of these acids are listed chemicals

A fact that surprises buyers and belongs on a purchasing checklist: hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid are both List II chemicals under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s rules. 21 CFR 1310.02(b) names them at paragraphs (8) and (9) — “Hydrochloric acid (including anhydrous hydrogen chloride)” and “Sulfuric acid” — alongside acetone, toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, acetic anhydride and potassium permanganate, several of which also sit in this catalog. Listing brings recordkeeping and reporting consequences for a regulated person, and § 1310.04(b) requires records for a List II chemical transaction to be kept for two years after the date of the transaction.

This is not a hazard classification and it does not appear on a safety data sheet as one. It is a separate regulatory identity attaching to the same drum, and a purchasing team that has mapped a material’s hazard class, its transport classification and its exposure limits has still not necessarily mapped this. Nothing here is legal advice, and whether any particular party or transaction is covered is a determination for the reader and their counsel.

And the listing is narrower than the list suggests

Read only § 1310.02 and you would draw the wrong conclusion, which is why the companion section matters. 21 CFR 1310.08(a) excludes from the definition of a regulated transaction “domestic and import transactions of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids but not including anhydrous hydrogen chloride.” Paragraph (b) then excludes exports, transshipments and international transactions of the same two acids “except for exports, transshipments and international transactions to” fourteen named countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. For those destinations § 1310.04(f)(2)(iv) sets a threshold of 50 gallons for each acid, with 27 kilograms for anhydrous hydrogen chloride.

So the listing is real, the domestic exclusion is real, the geographic carve-out from the exclusion is real, and the anhydrous gas is treated differently from the solution throughout. That is four distinctions in two short sections, and each of them is the kind of detail that a summary loses. The general habit is the transferable part: when a rule is cited at you, read the section that states the exclusions before acting on the section that states the coverage. Again, nothing here is legal advice.

Where the discharge boundary is drawn

40 CFR part 435 is the effluent-guideline category for oil and gas extraction, and it is worth knowing what it does and does not reach. It divides the industry by location and production rather than by chemistry: subpart A offshore, applying to facilities “engaged in field exploration, drilling, well production, and well treatment” seaward of the inner boundary of the territorial seas; subpart C onshore; subpart D coastal; subpart E, headed the agricultural and wildlife water use subcategory but described in its own applicability section as the beneficial use subcategory, which reaches onshore facilities west of the 98th meridian whose produced water “is of good enough quality to be used for wildlife or livestock watering or other agricultural uses and that the produced water is actually put to such use during periods of discharge”; subpart F the stripper subcategory, for onshore facilities producing ten barrels per well per calendar day or less; and subpart H, coalbed methane, which is [Reserved] — the part is not uniformly complete, and reading it means checking whether the subcategory you land in has any text in it.

The onshore limit at § 435.32 is the shortest sentence in the part and the most consequential: best practicable control technology is “no discharge of waste water pollutants into navigable waters from any source associated with production, field exploration, drilling, well completion, or well treatment,” naming produced water, drilling muds, drill cuttings and produced sand. Subpart G then closes the obvious workaround, stating at § 435.70(a) that the subpart exists to prevent facilities “from circumventing the effluent limitations guidelines and standards applicable to those facilities by moving effluent produced in one subcategory to another subcategory for disposal under less stringent requirements.”

Two things follow for a purchase record. Which subcategory governs a facility is a written determination somebody owns, and the obligation it creates runs to the facility and its permit — not to the supplier of any chemical, and not to anything printed on a drum. And the part shows again how a federal rule handles a private standard: § 435.11(i) defines diesel oil by reference to “the grade of distillate fuel oil, as specified in the American Society for Testing and Materials Standard Specification for Diesel Fuel Oils D975-91,” incorporated by reference — a specific edition, from 1991, that a reader must obtain from the publisher or inspect at a records location. That is the same pattern as ASTM D3699 in the kerosene guide: the rule names the document and pins the edition, and the numbers themselves are somewhere you have to go and get.

• Is the concentration written as weight percent with a basis and a reference temperature, or only as a Baumé degree?
• Which attributes does your specification control — iron, chloride, sulfate, free acid, residue — each with a method, units and a reporting limit?
• Which alloys, elastomers and gasket materials contact the acid at the delivered concentration and temperature, and who approved them?
• Who owns the permit, the discharge determination and the exposure assessment for this operation?

What a supplier can settle, and what it cannot

What a supplier can put in writing is the identity of the material, the concentration on a stated basis, the attributes it measured with the methods it used, the packaging and the lot documents. Alliance sends a Certificate of Analysis when a customer asks, at no charge; name in the purchase order which document is meant, because a sample certificate is not a lot certificate. A nominal concentration shared between two products does not establish interchangeability, and an industry listing is not an application approval.

What a supplier cannot settle is everything downstream of the drum: the treatment design, the rate, the sequence, the metallurgy of a specific system, the discharge determination and the exposure assessment. This guide supplies none of them, states no dose or application rate, and does not say that any Alliance product is suitable, approved or recommended for well service, equipment cleaning or any other use. It is source-based editorial guidance, no original testing was performed for it, and independent specialist review is pending.

Requirement → evidence → decision boundary

An editorial checklist for your review—not a table of product specifications.

One salt, and a great many retired numbers

Ammonium bifluoride is NH₄HF₂, the acid salt of ammonium fluoride and hydrogen fluoride, and the aggregated public record gives its current CAS number as 1341-49-7 with two related parent registrations — 12125-01-8 for ammonium fluoride and 7664-39-3 for hydrogen fluoride. What is unusual about the record is the list beneath that: twelve deprecated CAS numbers, among them 7790-15-0, 16941-26-7 and 14055-61-9. A specification, a legacy purchase order or an old data sheet may perfectly well carry one of those. Matching on a retired number is how two parties end up believing they have agreed on a substance.

The commercial article is not the pure compound either, and the record says so from two directions. It describes the material as “available as flakes, granules, and solutions” with “impurities at <1% include hydrogen fluoride and ammonium fluoride,” and separately records that “commercial ammonium bifluoride, which usually contains 1% NH₄F, is made by gas phase reactions of one mole of anhydrous ammonia with two moles of anhydrous hydrogen fluoride; the melt that forms is flaked on a cooled drum.” It lists grades as “Pure, 99+%; Technical, 97-98.5%.” Assay, the identity of the balance, and the physical form are therefore three separate questions, and a flake is not a granule for a dissolving or dosing arrangement.

In water it is hydrofluoric acid chemistry

The record is direct about what happens when the salt meets water: “dissolves in water and forms a weak solution of hydrofluoric acid.” It is equally direct about acid contact — the material “reacts with concentrated acids (formation of HF) and concentrated alkaline solutions (formation of NH₃)” — and about silicates, reacting “with silicon containing materials like glass or ceramics at room temperature (formation of SiF₄).” Two independent entries add that in the presence of moisture it “will corrode glass, cement, and most metals,” and that it will etch glass. The salt is a solid, it is recorded as non-combustible, and none of that makes it inert.

Those statements are why the packaging and transfer fields on a purchase record are not administrative here. The record carries an explicit container instruction attributed to the US Coast Guard: “do not use steel, nickel, or aluminum containers,” with the note that flammable hydrogen gas may collect in enclosed spaces. It records the material as deliquescent and “hygroscopic if ambient humidity over 50%” with “no tendency to form hydrates,” which makes ambient humidity at the storage location a real variable for a flake. It also shows why a number needs its originating record: decomposition is given as 240 °C in one entry and, from a different agency, as a boiling point of 463.1 °F that “decomposes at 446 °F,” which is about 230 °C. Those do not agree, and neither was measured on a supplied lot.

This guide does not tell anyone how to use this material. It sets no dose, ratio, dissolving procedure, temperature or endpoint, specifies no personal protective equipment, and gives no first-aid or medical guidance. The safety data sheet for the exact product, at its current revision, governs handling, storage, spill response and emergency planning, and it is the document to obtain and read before the material is ordered rather than after it arrives.

The exposure evidence has to be assembled

Queried on September 12, 2026, the NIOSH Pocket Guide had no card for ammonium bifluoride. The nearest entry is hydrogen fluoride, CAS 7664-39-3, which gives a NIOSH REL of 3 ppm as a time-weighted average with a 6 ppm ceiling over 15 minutes, an IDLH of 30 ppm, and a conversion of 1 ppm = 0.82 mg/m³. Its incompatibilities are recorded as “metals, water or steam,” with the note that hydrogen fluoride is “corrosive to metals” and “will attack glass and concrete.”

The gap is the finding. Hydrogen fluoride is a gas or a fuming liquid below 67 °F and ammonium bifluoride is a crystalline solid; the exposure routes, the airborne form and the sampling method are not the same problem, so the HF card cannot simply be applied to the salt. What it does establish is the severity of the fluoride hazard that the salt can generate, and that an exposure assessment for an operation using the salt has to be built for that operation rather than looked up. That assessment is the employer’s, performed by a qualified person for the actual task, and no purchase document or supplier statement can stand in for it.

A limit expressed “as F” is not a limit on the salt

The OSHA air-contaminant tables carry several entries a fluoride operation will meet, and they are not interchangeable. Table Z-1 of 29 CFR 1910.1000 lists “Fluorides (as F)” with 2.5 in the mg/m³ column and, in the ppm column, footnote 4 — which reads, in full, “Varies with compound.” The table is stating outright that a parts-per-million figure cannot be given for this row, because a fixed mass of fluorine sits in a different mass of every compound that carries it. Separately, Table Z-1 lists “Hydrogen fluoride (as F)” under CAS 7664-39-3 with footnote 2, “See Table Z-2,” and Table Z-2 gives hydrogen fluoride 3 ppm and “Fluoride as dust” 2.5 mg/m³. Both Table Z-2 entries are annotated “(Z37.28-1969)” — the limits are pinned to a consensus standard from 1969, the same pattern of a rule adopting a private document at a fixed edition that runs through this whole collection.

So read the units before comparing anything. A limit expressed “as F” is a limit on the fluorine content of the airborne material, not on the mass of the salt; 2.5 mg/m³ as F and 2.5 mg/m³ of ammonium bifluoride are different quantities. A row is also keyed to a substance and a CAS number, and a similar common name is not the same row — the same trap the aerospace materials and cleanliness collection documents for naphtha. Which row governs a given operation, and what obligation follows, is the employer’s determination, made with a qualified industrial hygienist and an assessment of the actual task. Table Z-1’s own note records that a CAS number there “is for information only” and that “enforcement is based on the substance name.”

What to put on the purchase document

Write the identity first: the current CAS number, the formula, the form as delivered, and the assay with the identity of the balance. Then the attributes your process actually controls, each with a limit, a method, units and a reporting limit taken from your own specification rather than from a supplier’s marketing sheet. Then the packaging and transfer interface, with the wetted materials named, since the record rules out several obvious ones. Then the documents: the safety data sheet at its current revision, and the lot documentation. Alliance sends a Certificate of Analysis when a customer asks, at no charge; say in the purchase order which analytes and methods it must cover, and note that a sample certificate describes what the product has generally looked like while a lot certificate reports results for the material being shipped.

The aggregated record lists oil well acidizing among this substance’s industrial uses, alongside glass etching, electroplating, metal brightening and equipment cleaning. That is a statement about what the chemical industry does with the compound, recorded by a public agency. It is not a statement about any Alliance product, and nothing in this library says that an Alliance product is suitable, approved or recommended for well service or for any other application. This is source-based editorial guidance, no original testing was performed for it, and independent specialist review is pending.

• Is the CAS number on the specification the current registration, or one of the deprecated numbers?
• What is the assay, what is the balance, and is the material a flake, a granule or a solution?
• Which wetted materials contact it, and does the arrangement avoid the containers the record rules out?
• Who holds the current safety data sheet, and who owns the exposure assessment and emergency planning for this operation?

Requirement → evidence → decision boundary

An editorial checklist for your review—not a table of product specifications.