Sucker Rod Pump

Building upon the successes of cathodically protected rod strings in rotary applications, this study extends the evaluation to reciprocating sucker rod pump operations using anode-coated coiled rod strings. The paper presents results from a pilot project involving four wells for a major California oil and gas producer, achieving a remarkable 11-fold improvement in Mean Time to Failure (MTF)...

Downhole separation is a critical process for proper sucker rod pump operation. This technology has been successfully applied in vertical wells, providing a solution for gas interference. New horizontal wells present a new challenge to this technology, since slug flow is a predominant flow pattern when sucker rod pumps are implemented. Many experimental studies have been conducted in the past that...

As rod lift systems are extended to greater depths and tasked with higher production rates, operators face increasing complexity in maintaining reliability and cost-effectiveness. Elevated loads, deeper pump landings, and aggressive environments introduce compounded risks, including rod and tubing wear, bending fatigue failures, corrosion fatigue, and connection reliability issues, among others...

Sand production has been recognized by the oil and gas industry as one of the most significant challenges affecting the operation, efficiency, and longevity of unconventional rod-pumped wells. As sand and other solid particles migrate into the pump assembly, they create abrasive conditions that accelerate wear on critical components. This abrasion not only reduces pump efficiency but also...

A major Bakken operator repeatedly experienced insufficient pump fillage and lower-than-anticipated production volumes in rod-pumped horizontal wells due to poor gas and sand separation. Unable to achieve the desired results after deploying a variety of different gas- and sand-mitigation techniques, the operator partnered with Endurance Lift Solutions to deploy the patented ELS Guardian™ separator...

Sucker rod pumps (SRPs) remain the leading artificial lift (AL) method worldwide, with technological advancements tracing back to the wave equation development in the 1960s. Leveraging edge-based technologies, a new workflow has been developed to enhance existing Pump-Off Controller (POC) capabilities. This workflow integrates machine learning (ML)-driven dynamometer card classification for real...

Pump off controllers (POC’s) that produce dynamometer cards are and have been the preferred method of detecting pump off in rod pump applications. In addition to detecting pump off, these devices provide several leading indicators such as run time, cycles, peak and minimum loads, gearbox and rod stress, and a variety of other data points. In order to do this, a load cell, a position measuring...

Dynamic sucker rod sucker rod modeling in deviated wells has proven difficult. Wave equation solutions – when applied to measured surface cards - have generally produced dubious pump cards. Recently acquired measurements collected from deviated wells using downhole dynamometers have inspired a new wave equation formulation and a modern finite difference implementation. The new model produces pump...

Reciprocating rod pumps (RRP) have globally shown that with longer strokes increased productivity and reduced operational costs can be achieved over that of a progressive cavity pump (PCP) in clean to moderate solids producing wells. This has also been extended to suggest that with the right equipment mean time to failure can be increased.  This information has been pivotal in a large-scale change...

Sucker rod pumping can experience reliability challenges when produced fluid contains solids. Any improvement in the ability for a sucker rod pumping system to handle solids would be highly beneficial. The sucker rod pump is one component of a complex downhole system of components for sucker rod pumping. Other components of this system include a downhole gas separator, a downhole solids separator...