Sucker-Rod-Pumping Failures in the Permian Basin

Abstract

Abstract Sucker rod pumping is the most popular form of artificial lift in the Permian Basin, which is one of the largest petroleum production basins in the United States.This paper is part of the research results of the Artificial Lift Energy Optimization Consortium (ALEOC),a research project which is sponsored by 11 oil companies operating in the Permian Basin.The analyzed data provided by these 11 oil companies came from more the 25,000 sucker rod pumping wells, a quarter of the total sucker rod pumped wells.The wells' locations are scattered in the Permian Basin. Therefore the information presented here is typical enough of this area. This paper presented the methods used to organize and pre-treat the primary databases provided by the operators, and the techniques used to analyze the failure data. Failure frequency was introduced to do comparisons, plots according to failure frequency, year, company, area location, and formation were given to make the data more straightforward. Analysis of results show that different companies have very different operation management and data manipulation methods, which made it necessary for companies to come together to learn from each other. There are big differences among the failure frequencies of companies, which is an indicator of their field operation efficiency, facility manipulation underground working conditions of the sucker rod pumping equipment and so forth. There is a trend of yearly failure frequency decrease among the participated companies with a few exceptions; pump failure frequency is the largest problem among those of the sucker rod pumping components. The results present a picture of sucker rod pumping in the Permian Basin and can be used in further statistical analysis of the sucker rod pumping failures and to guide later decision-making.