SPE Strong: Strengthening Our Core: There Is No Silver Bullet: Strengthening the Fundamentals

Abstract

President's column “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.” —Jim Rohn, American businessman and author This month’s column is dedicated to technology evaluation, an area where I have spent the majority of my career. For at least 2 decades, I have been approached almost weekly by either one of my engineers or an inventor who has found the “next best thing that will revolutionize our industry.” While I have been a champion for innovation and technology development, I have also applied critical thinking in forming my opinion of such claims. The first questions I always ask myself are: “Do I need this new technology?” and “Do I understand the root cause of the problem well enough to determine if applying existing technology and accepted practices cannot solve it?” To adequately answer these questions, a good understanding of the fundamentals, such as fluid or mechanical dynamics, is often needed. Is this new tool or method genuinely innovative, or has it been born out of engineering ignorance? “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” —Benjamin Franklin For context, let me provide an example. The downhole rod-driven reciprocating pump has existed since the late 1800s (Beckwith 2014). For a century, the design practices for deter-mining the optimal tolerance between the downhole plunger and barrel were theoretical equations and often used rules of thumb. Too large of a tolerance would lead to excess fluid slip-page and decreasing efficiency of the pump. Too tight of a tolerance could lead to rod buckling and the inability to handle particulates such as sand. As an industry, we typically erred on the side of caution toward tighter tolerances, and many “gadgets” were invented to prolong the life of the downhole rods and pumps and to counter issues caused by this design practice. It wasn’t until the late 1990s when a group of operators in the Permian Basin began to question the validity of the existing equations and design philosophies. These Permian operators collectively funded research at Texas Tech University to understand the dynamics of the fluid slippage between a plunger and barrel under a variety of conditions. Through intensive research and experimentation of the fundamentals, they were able to develop a new equation, later named the Patterson Equation, which proved that larger tolerances did not lead to excess slippage (Nickens et al. 2005). The gained understanding of these previously accepted fundamentals had significant implications throughout the industry. Operators began to increase their plunger and barrel tolerances in their designs, and they no longer needed gadgets. As a result, the run life of the downhole equipment increased considerably. The value gained by those operating companies collaborating with the university far exceeded their original investment. However, the industry was the greatest benefactor of the publication of the research.