Artificial Lift

The cavitation phenomenon has been extensively studied for many years, however, guidelines on how to implement this existing knowledge to the actual operation of the jet pumping systems in the oilfield are not abundant and, as per the author can see it, not yet being presented in such way that the people that operate these systems in the oilfield could implement on a straight forward way. It has...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the history of different gas lift design methods and the theory behind a new design method.  In January 2019, Production Lift Companies and Concho Resources ran a new gas lift design method in two unconventional wells in the Permian Basin.  This new method is designed to exploit the initial high bottom hole pressure in unconventional wells to produce higher...

Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) are a well-known method of pumping beam wells. By running the well continuously and adjusting pumping speed based on pump fillage, they provide unique benefits to reduce failures in difficult environments as compared to operating in pump-off control (POC); these environments might include solids, buckling tendencies at pump-off, and CO2 WAG environments. Although...

The ESP system is a mechanical/electrical/hydrodynamic system. It is costly when it fails as the tubing has to be pulled and much or all of the equipment is replaced.  This paper points out tips in the below various areas that if considered are likely to increase the average run life of ESP Systems

-Failure definitions from data -Design -Installation -SCADA-Monitoring -Tips for running in Harsh...

The Apache-operated Adair San Andres Unit (ASAU) currently employs fifteen capillary string (cap string) equipped producing wells, representing 16% of the active producer count. Apache started converting producing wells to cap strings in 2016.  This idea was introduced to Apache at the 2012 CO2 Conference in Midland and later reinforced during a field tour of Whiting’s North Ward Estes CO2 flood...

Dog Leg Severity (DLS) had been used for many decades as recommendations to try to drill oil and gas wells and provide "trouble free" operating conditions. Many of these recommendations were historically based on vertical, shallow (5000 ft.) deep wells. But as wells continued to be drilled deeper, the recommendations were still applied. With the current drilling and operating practices of...

One of the largest lease operating expenses is electrical cost. Only a small portion of electrical cost is value-added conversion of electricity to fluid lifting power. The rest is lost to downhole friction, fluid flow friction, pumping unit, and electrical to mechanical power conversion inefficiencies.  Overall “line to fluid” system efficiency will typically range from 20% to 40%. Some cases...

The common surface chemical applications cannot reach or have low efficiency due to high fluid levels. This paper Introduces a new chemical technology for all types of artificial lift systems that guarantees an efficient downhole treatment at the entry point and summarizes the applications of this revolutionary method established to deliver chemical combinations by microencapsulating the compounds...

High gas-liquid formation ratios appear as the fluid level decreases and as a result significant decreases in pumping efficiency are seen in the ESPs. This problem force frequent shutdowns in the pump because the gas is incapable of adequately cooling the motor and this forces the companies to maintain high fluid levels to avoid the formation of free gas at the pump intake, which increases the PIP...

Wells with high depletion rate present high free gas at pump intake conditions. In all cases, the production of fluid with a high gas-liquid ratio leads to an inefficient performance of the rod pump systems. The initial solution to this problem is the installation of poor boy gas separators which capacity of gas separation is reduced and do not provide a high-performance solution.  Packer type gas...