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It appears to me you are not telling the full story. Like, what engine or application you are talking about, which brand and viscosity of oil you use, what are conditions of application, did you measured TBN yourself or send it to a lab, how you collected representative sample for testing TBN and water if "engine" is off, etc. etc. However, with the information you did provide, I think refrig guy gave you the right answer.
The TBN going down when the soot level is going up with moisture present is exactly what I described above. The sulfur from the fuel is making soot in the oil. There is moisture present (0.3% according to your data) allowing the sulfur to react to form acids.

There will be a lag time for the soot to get into the oil and for the moisture to react with the sulfur in the soot. The intial high TBN values will not drop until you get both moisture and soot in the oil. The chemical reaction between the moisture and the soot will go slower while the engine oil is cool, and will go faster when the oil is warmer.

This is one reason you should change engine oil on a time period basis (every 12 months for example) even if there are only very few operating hours on the engine. The additives will be depleted even if the engine is not running.
Soot is from incomplete combustion of the fuel. Diesel fuel has sulfur in it. Soot has both carbon and sulfur in it because the sulfur containing components do not get completely combusted either. Some of the sulfur from the fuel ends up in the oil where it can be converted into sulphuric acid by chemical reaction with moisture.

High levels of sulfur cause more particulates to be formed as the fuel is combusted. I believe this is one of the main reasons for the introduction of low sulfur fuels. If you are burning ultra low sulfur fuel, the acidity formed from soot reacting with moisture should be less.

I suggest you do some reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-low_sulfur_diesel
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