Paper: Guide to Well Failure Root Cause Analysis in Sour Beam Pumping Service

Production equipment failures in beam pumped wells are an everyday expense in the oil field. Minimizing repeated or unnecessary failures caused by improper design handling and metallurgy directly reduces the operating expense of any oil company or operator. As the industry downsizes its work force, innovative ways of maintaining or reducing well service costs are becoming more and more necessary. This paper presents a guide to various causes to common failures which are applicable in a variety of service conditions: sour/sweet, shallow/deep and high/low production volumes. This paper is aimed at decreasing over-dependence on technologically advanced equipment, complicated databases and the intensive training needed to assist an inexperienced technician or operator in identifying and diagnosing the root causes of common equipment failures. The guide was developed by personnel from a West Texas operating company and is based upon their five-year study.