Artificial Lift

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.

This paper will discuss reducing failures in rod pumped wells by using best practices and design changes. The theme of the paper is to share solutions observed over the last 41 years while working with rod pumped wells. These best practices applied from the polished rod through the bottom hole assembly have been proven to improve run time between failures. The topics discussed are improper installation of equipment along with the effect of a properly designed bottom hole assembly. I will also highlight pump designs and accessory items to help with sand and gas issues.

Corrosion fatigue (CF) is an important concern for structures that are exposed to cyclic loads in corrosive environments, especially in the case of oil and gas operations like drilling, offshore risers or sucker rods in artificial lift. Considering the current combination of complex wells completions and the increase of water cuts, the CO2, H2S and Bacteria represent a higher risk for CF failures in sucker rods. This combined effect force operators to choose a steel for either corrosive environments or high loads and increase the chemical inhibition programs.

With the proliferation of production from multiple zones within wells, a major challenge long recognized by industry is to understand which zones are contributing, and how much. This is even more of a challenge with multiphase flow from different zones and with the advent of hydraulic fracturing, correctly identifying which zones have the potential to contribute is critical for future operations. 

Vortex Tools addresses the challenges of managing/optimizing hydrocarbon liquids recovery from horizontal wells with long laterals, thereby increasing their economic value. A 2014 five-well case study with a regional independent found that deploying Vortex downhole DX-I tubing tools (in conjunction with gas lift and plunger) saw beneficial increases in oil & gas production, along with a significant increase in water removal, in horizontal and deviated wells.

Automation is a crucial element to modern production facilities in the Permian Basin.  However, most facilities engineers lack basic understanding of automation and therefore cannot properly design or implement an automated system.  This paper will discuss automation and instrumentation basics as part of a broad automation philosophy to help readers understand how individual components fit into a complete design.  Individual components (or instruments) will be examined to share what options are available to industry and how they can best be utilized.