Taft Oil Technology Academy Taft Union High School

Primary Production

The producing life of an oil well can be divided into phases, defined by the amount of energy or pressure in the reservoir. Primary Recovery Secondary or Improved

Recovery Tertiary or Enhanced

Recovery

The first producing phase Includes two stages

Natural Flow- the simplest and most profitable stage.

Artificial Lift- when the reservoir pressure has been depleted to the point that fluid entering the wellbore does not flow to the surface and must be pumped from the well.

With oil wells, usually too much water makes its way to the wellbore.

The added weight of the water may stop the flow

Remember that water is more dense than oil.

Once the natural flow is depleted, an artificial method of lifting oil is needed to bring the oil to the surface.

A pump

Gas injection

The most common method used.

It sends reciprocating motion through a string of sucker rods. Sucker rods are solid

high-strength steel or fiberglass connected to each other.

At the bottom is the rod pump

At the top is a polished rod which is attached to the horsehead.

Conventional Pumping Unit

A double box coupling connects the sucker rods

The pump is made up of a barrel, plunger, standing valve, and a traveling valve.

As the pumping unit moves up and down, the plunger moves up and down inside the barrel.

When the plunger moves up, the ball in the standing valve is pushed off its seat by the fluid below the pump

At the same time, the fluid above moves the ball in the traveling valve against the seat and closes the valve. Fluids in the well enter the barrel through the open standing valve.

On the downward stroke of the plunger, the traveling valve opens, the standing valve closes, and the fluid is forced from the barrel into and through the plunger.

The fluid is lifted by the plunger and goes into the tubing.

Rod pumps can be used on shallow wells that must lift a lot of fluid. Larger diameter- the barrel

can be the same diameter as the tubing.

Harder to service. Insert or tubing pumps have

to be smaller than the tubing, so don’t lift as much as the tubing pump. Can be removed and replaced

quickly.

This pump is used when a well is pumping large volumes of water.

Pumps can be stacked on top of each other in the well.

An armored cable supplies electricity to the unit.

The pumps are sensitive to sand and gas.

Uses hydraulic energy to make the down-hole pump operate.

Less complicated than beam pumping, but the pump erodes easily.

Powered by power oil, which is oil previously lifted from the reservoir.

Requires two tubing strings- one to pump the power oil down, and another to return the power oil and produced oil to the surface.

Consists of two pistons, one above the other, connected by a rod that moves up and down in the pump.

The pump is divided into an engine section (top section) and a pumping section (bottom section).

The pump section has four ball-and-seat valves that open and close as the pump moves up and down.

Compresses and injects natural gas into a well to make it produce.

Gas lift valves are installed on the production tubing so that gas can be forced down the annulus, into the liquid and tubing to lift the crude out.

Used frequently in offshore production

Go to www.lufkin.com and look at the various designs of pumping units.

Print out the designs and label the components of the 5 pumping unit designs.

Use Slide #3 as a guide If a design doesn’t have a component of the

conventional pumping unit, explain why that design doesn’t use that component.