Artificial Lift

This paper describes an artificial lift case study where three pilot test wells were installed using measuring-while-installing (MWI) equipment during the process. The final results enabled us to meet the goals and expectations of these test wells. The main test objectives were to reduce the time to run the electrical submersible pump (ESP) in the well, to 

Re-utilization of company owned artificial lift equipment and parts is a common practice among operators and service providers across the industry.  It is common practice for operators to resize artificial lift equipment at failure or proactively as economics allow. During resizing activity, it is not uncommon to utilize company owned equipment and inventory to satisfy the hydraulic lifting requirements of the system.

Pertamina Hulu Energi Offshore North West Java (PHE ONWJ), which is a Production Sharing Contractor of the Government of Indonesia, operates a large number of offshore ESP wells in Java Sea, Indonesia. To stimulate the wells and increase near-wellbore permeability, PHE ONWJ has executed matrix acidizing from 2013 until 2015. During acid deployment, ESP was left in place (downhole). In fact, the ESP was also switched on to unload the spent acid. Given the acid corrosive properties on metals which make up some of the ESP components, a post-stimulation evaluation was conducted in May 2016.

The pump stroke can be longer than the surface stroke when the dynamic motion of the beam pump system adds momentum to the rod string, resulting in the pump stroke length increasing.  The pump stroke can be shorter than the surface stroke when sucker rods stretch to pick up the pump fluid load and other frictional forces.  Rod stretch creates under travel dynamometer card shape.  Pumping fast or high plunger velocities creates over travel cards. 

Many sucker rod lifted wells are operating at less than 30% electrical efficiency, because the downhole gas separator installed in the well is inefficient.  Free gas interfering with liquid filling the pump is a major operational problem encountered in producing Sucker Rod Lifted wells.  Gas interference is when free gas at the pump intake enters the pump filling displacement volume with gas in place of liquid, then significant loss in liquid production, reduced drawdown, increased failures and inefficiency occurs.

There are thousands of marginal wells in the Permian Basin with potential to produce significantly more oil and gas with the assistance of plunger lift.  Working with multiple operators in the Permian Basin, PLSI has installed plunger lift systems in these type wells and realized significant increases in oil and gas production.  The common characteristic is fluid downhole which never makes it to the surface production facilities.  This fluid loads up the wellbore downhole which increases hydrostatic back pressure on the formation that holds back production.

Rod pump service data provides valuable insight into wellbore conditions and the efficacy of the rod lift system. Trend analysis of metrics such as reason for well pull and pump component evaluation provides increased visibility about individual well performance issues and more broadly, about field performance. Comprehensive pump service data is an indispensable supplement to an operator’s internal data in well review meetings for the purpose of improving optimization efforts.

Tubing leaks account for half of the failures in the Bakken wells. The root cause is coupling on tubing wear due to the non-metallic guides wearing out.  

In order to combat this problem, ToughMet 3 TS95 sucker rod couplings were installed in up to 250 wells to significantly reduce the failure rate in the field.  Several individual case histories will be discussed to demonstrate the lifetime extension and reduced wear rates seen with the use of the new couplings.

Failures in the sucker rod industry can be costly and time consuming. A thorough understanding of the critical factors affecting the overall reliability of steel sucker rods is important to address these failures. The manufacturing and servicing of sucker rods involves a chain of processes starting with the steel mills, sucker rod manufacturer and eventually goes to the end user. There are a lot of critical factors involved in every step of the process before the product goes down hole.

Production challenges in horizontal wells are caused by slug flow behaviour from the horizontal. In response, Production Plus developed the flow conditioning HEAL System to mitigate slug flow before fluids enter the downhole separator and pump. Slug flow mitigation allows rod pumping to be more effective and efficient, offering a solution for low-cost OPEX to reliably maximize drawdown.