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With existing demands for oil and gas at continued higher prices, there has become a greater interest in previously uneconomical reservoirs. The Cisco and Canyon formations in Sterling County, Texas fall into this category. In particular, the Conger (Penn) area has enjoyed rapid and continuous development since 1977. Hydraulic fracturing has been required to stimulate for commercial production. Stimulation practices have been reviewed and a more efficient approach developed to provide maximum productivity at an optimum cost.

The rapid development of the Rhoda Walker Field (51 new wells in 1977 and 31 wells in 1976) indicates the interest in the Delaware Mountain Group pays in the Delaware Basin. Hydraulic fracturing treatments are necessary to stimulate production to a commercial level. An efficient stimulation approach has been developed, with the aid of detailed computer design studies, to produce maximum productivity in a cost-effective manner.

Today's cutting edge diagnostic software for beam pumping surveillance, analysis, and optimization includes improved methodology based on time-tested techniques as well as practical new functionality. Specifically, this paper will reference dynamometer card pattern matching to aid the well analyst, lease operator, or other interested parties in understanding well operating conditions. This is technology available from the 1980's, but refined in the pattern matching algorithms used and the presentation of results to the user.

A novel gelling agent for hydrochloric acid is evaluated through field tests. Increased formation conductivity and live acid penetration depth is reflected by sustained improvements in production after the treatments. The advantages of this new gelling agent are its stability in high concentrations of hydrochloric acid (28 percent) to 300 F. over a range of temperatures up Comparisons with ungelled acid and acid treatments using other gelling agents are presented. These case histories are in West Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana and other parts of the country.

It is extremely costly to do wireline gas-lift valve replacement in wells with subsea wellheads. All gas-lift valves for these installations should be designed for maximum run life and known injection-gas throughput performance for unloading and gas lifting the well. The API Recommended Practice method for gas-lift valve testing is not economically applicable. This paper describes a practical inexpensive rapid method for performance testing individual gas-lift valves in the field utilizing the injection-gas source for lifting the well.

Knowledge of oil-water relative permeability, polymer viscosity, and polymer retention is required to design a polymer flood. These properties are routinely determined in laboratory tests with reservoir rock and fluids. Lacking reservoir core material for laboratory measurements, Chain Oil Co. used a series of single well tests to define the required properties. Transient tests of buildup and falloff pressures were used to find the relative permeability end points, while a single well pumpin-pumpout test was conducted to determine polymer retention.

The "RUFF-COTE" * process, a resin-sand coating applied to the external surface of casing to provide an improved bond between the casing and cement, has now been widely used in oilfield completions for the past ten years. This process has been applied to well casing from 2-7/ 8 in. slim holes to 20- in. surface casing in ultra-deep wells. Additional application has been on intermediate casing strings as well as on offshore platform jacket legs.

In 1961, Beach, O"Brien and Goins, published the results of a study of squeeze-cementing perforations." The study was made over a four-year time span and involved actual wells located primarily in South Texas. The publication gives a comparison of the squeeze practice of that time of attaining pressures equal to overburden pressure and "putting away" relatively large volumes of cement, to the new concept of low-pressure "hesitation" or the "walking" squeeze. The former method made use of normal slurries and the latter of filtrate-loss-controlled slurries.

During the recent development of the fire-flood oil recovery processes, one of the first problems that had to be answered is how to initiate combustion. It was found that quite often certain crude oils were difficult to ignite even in the Iaboratory experiments, and the problems were magnified in field cases. Just why certain oils are more or less susceptible to combustion than other oils of oil bearing formations is not precisely known; but because of this, seireral ignition methods have been developeci and ignition equipment has been improved.

The fire-safe capability of a valve is becoming increasingly important when selecting valves, for hydrocarbon processing service. In spite of this,

Recent activity in the Avalon Shale play, an upper member of the Leonard series in southeastern New Mexico1, has opened up a new horizon for production from an unconventional formation. Key to the potential success of the Avalon Shale play will be the ability to adapt and refine horizontal completion methods and stimulation techniques. The effectiveness of hydraulic fracture stimulations is critical for optimal economic production of this natural gas and oil shale play.

There are many different forms of artificial lift methods used in oil and gas wells in the United States. Eighty percent of the wells in the USA that are using a form artificial lift use a beam pump; to lift the fluids out of the well bore. Lifting the fluid out of the well bore lowers the hydrostatic pressure acting on the producing formation allowing greater in-flow and increased productivity. There are several reasons for the popularity of the beam pump; they are rugged, forgiving and easy to automate. Good diagnostics exist due to many companies developing dynograph systems.

Conventional Sucker Rods were designed and thought for Beam Pumping applications as well as their make-up process (with circumferential displacement). This brought many failures in the connection which is supposed to be stronger than the rod body. A line of Hollow Sucker Rods (HSR) was developed with better material distribution and several advantages but basically providing more reliability due to the fact that they were thought from the development for PCP.

Over the last 50 years hydraulic lift has proven its worth to operators worldwide in varying lift conditions, both on and offshore. Since the development of hydraulic lift in the 1930's, the products and technology have rendered hydraulics a viable means of artificial lift in today's oilfield. Through understanding and foresight, the operators can optimize the production and minimize the operating expense through equipment flexibility and performance.

Continually rising costs for producing petroleum make it mandatory for the oil industry to search for more efficient, improved materials and simplified, longer-life equipment. "Flexirod", the newly marketed flexible pumping stand, possesses characteristics that drastically reduce corrosion fatigue and thereby frequency of well pulling, lower horsepower requirements, make handling easier and faster and create the potential for new concepts in pumping equipment.

During 1969, Getty Oil Company, which has since become part of Texaco, Inc., initiated a massive field automation program in it's Kern River Oilfield in California. The result was the SCAN system, or Sampling, Control and Alarm Network, which can be credited with supplying most of the field data and operating information necessary for the successful transformation of that 70 year old oilfield from a daily oil production of 45,000 barrels to a maximum of over 100,000 barrels per day.

Increased drilling and operating costs have resulted in a greater number of dually completed wells. Most operators prefer two parallel tubing strings over concentric installations, since the development of detachable two-string packers and split wellhead equipment for parallel strings. This paper discusses in detail the flow valve selection for gas lifting both zones of dual with a common injection gas source. The material is presented in a manner which permits an operator to choose the proper valve design for a dual without a previous thorough knowledge of gas lift principles.

The world's largest flue gas operation is being conducted in the Block 31 Field, Crane County, Texas. This multi-pay field was discovered by The Atlantic Refining Co., now Atlantic Richfield Co, in Nov. 1945. Early in the field's life, the industry's first miscible displacement program was started in the Devonian reservoir. The 54 MMCF/D flue gas plant started operations on March 8,1966. The miscible program had been conducted for approximately 17 yrs. Prior to construction of the flue gas plant, a conventional gasoline plant and injection facilities were in operation.

Primary cementing is simple, i.e., displace drilling mud with cement to form a hydraulic seal between the pipe and the borehole. All too often, efficient drilling mud removal is not achieved, the cement cannot form a hydraulic seal and the result is communication between zones. This paper provides a discussion on the use of a fluid caliper to improve the success rate of primary cementing. The fluid caliper is an extension of mud conditioning and, used in conjunction with centralizers and other proper cementing procedures, provides for a surer primary cement job.

Sucker rod pumps are installed in approximately 90% of all oil wells in the U.S. Although they have been widely used for decades, there are many issues regarding the fluid dynamics of the pump that have not been fully investigated. A project was conducted at Sandia National Laboratories to develop an improved understanding of the fluid dynamics inside a sucker rod pump. A mathematical flow model was developed to predict pressures in any pump component or an entire pump under single-phase fluid and pumping conditions.

During the last ten years, the acoustical well sounder has really come into its own as a production tool. These instruments are used to determine the fluid level in wells by the echo method. In addition, the location of various subsurface equipment items can be determined. At the present time, there are two major manufacturers of acoustical well sounders. Both of these manufacturers use two small trunks to house their instruments. One trunk contains the wellhead attachment with the necessary interconnecting cables. The second trunk contains the amplifier-recorder.

Ideally when controlling a rod pumped well, is it important to have often and accurate fluid levels. However in the absence of the availability of these measurements, fluid levels must be calculated using fluid properties and pressure gradients. An important part of those calculations is being able to correctly approximate the fluid load. The fluid load is the difference between the upstroke fluid load and the downstoke fluid load.

The water-logging of low pressure gas wells is a serious problem in some areas, and tends to become more grievous as field pressures drop. The free travel plunger, an old idea in the petroleum industry may prove in some instances to be more economical than any other known method of meeting this problem. The paper explains the theory of the free travel plunger, presents a few case histories, and generally compares the economical and operational aspects of this method with the more popular siphon string and pumping methods.

Surfactants have performed well in a variety of applications with regard to stimulation. The role of surfactants, or surface active agents, in both acidizing and fracturing has been somewhat taken for granted; but these agents nonetheless play an extremely important and ever-increasing part in almost all successful stimulation treatments. Surfactants have been discussed thoroughly in the literature with respect to use in oil well treating fluids. Until recently, most surfactants used in stimulation have come from one of two families.

Foam cement's ultra-light density and high compressive strength characteristics have been employed in the Permian Basin to protect low-fracture gradient formations. In addition to standard casing jobs, squeeze cementing results have been greatly improved through use of fast setting, expansive foam cements to obtain an effective squeeze without breaking down weak formations. With this unique fluid, squeeze cementing jobs have had a significantly higher success ratio for controlling water zones and sealing corroded casing.