Artificial Lift

Comitt Well Solutions’ Excite system is an innovative down hole tool specially designed for pin-point refracturing and re-stimulation applications. The system is fully hydraulic and can accommodate any space-out between its isolation packers. The patented technology treats each cluster in the wellbore in a single trip and allows treatment of both existing and newly added stages.

Rod pumps are not the ideal system of lift when it comes to handling gas. We can only do so much with the configuration downhole especially for wells with open hole completions. Despite the limited options, we are coming to find that we can do better by manipulating parameters at the surface. Historically, we have manipulated back pressure on the tubing in order to control when gas breaks out of solution in the tubing. Now we are finding, on certain well types, that manipulating back pressure on the casing in order to keep gas in solution through the pump is proving to be successful.

There are many challenges associated with sucker rod lift in deviated wellbores that can lead to high failure rates and lost production. Tubing failures are amongst the costliest workovers and are often a result of metal to metal contact between the rod coupling and the tubing. Evaluating tubing on-site using both gamma and electromagnetic inspection allows for proper design optimization before returning to production.

Oasis Petroleum has ~1000 rod pump wells in the Bakken producing from 8000’ - 10,000’. A focused effort has been made over the past few years to reduce the failure rate from ~1.0 failures/well/year to the current rate of .68 failures/well/year. This has been the result of a holistic approach which has encompassed improvements in rod design, surveillance, training, development of Standard Operating Procedures and Best Practices, trialing new technology and POC optimization. This paper will document some of the successes and failures during this journey.

Rod lift design methods remain overwhelmingly unchanged since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, drilling and completion technology has undergone a dramatic transformation. The innovation gap between the two technologies and low-flow artificial lift has resulted in the need for improved design and workflow methods to more effectively operate an unconventional well throughout its lifecycle. New design and workflow processes have been developed that improve upon today’s common practices through the observation of unconventional well characteristics and root cause analysis of equipment failure.

A new technology was released last year with the goal of being safe, easy to run and attaining previously unachievable gas separation when compared to any other method available today. The new technology is a gas separator built into the casing (CGS) and is run on the actual casing string right after the well has been drilled. CGS is run permanently into place on the casing with no alteration to the drilling program whatsoever. The CGS is commonly placed at kickoff point or in a tangent further downhole and well work occurs with absolutely no alteration to normal completion processes.

When an insert rod pump gets stuck in tubing there will be a significant increase in well-servicing events. These events cost the consumer money and also places the worker's safety at risk. 

Problem being addressed: Determining optimized Gas Injection Rate for Gas Lifted wells to maximize lift efficiency. Challenges: While Gas Lift is the most natural artificial lift method, ever-changing surface and downhole conditions cause significant inefficiencies. The changing conditions require frequent adjustments to surface-injected gas rates to maintain the most efficient lifting gradient. If the proper adjustments are not made, these inefficiencies may hinder production and increase lease operating expenses.

There are many potential failures in production wells which result from corrosive downhole environments, mechanical aspects of artificial lift or a combination thereof. Tubing failures constitute a costly failure mechanism in production wells. Tubing inspections can provide valuable insight on the condition of tubing as well as the distinction between causes of tubing degradation. This information is utilized to replace worn and pitted tubing joints, failure root cause analysis and implement solutions to mitigate future failures.

When optimizing a reciprocating rod lift installation, key control parameters must be extracted from the downhole data. Traditionally, downhole data in the form of position and load data is derived from surface data using the wave equation. Downhole position and load data must be carefully analyzed to extract key control parameters for reciprocating rod lift optimization.
IRIS introduces a new and innovative approach for downhole data analysis.