The Guando oil field, located in Tolima, Colombia, and operated by Petrobras Colombia Ltd., has been developed with S-shape deviated wells, completed with progressing cavity pump (PCP) systems that are driven by centralized conventional sucker rod string.

The increase in sucker rod failures that has accompanied field development has lead to considerable well downtime—a major problem for field growth.

Sucker rod failures are associated with wellbore configuration and production conditions. To resolve the problem, continuous rod string has been implemented in some wells with outstanding success.

This paper describes the influence of wellbore configuration in the performance of conventional sucker rod, comparing the operation of wells with conventional sucker rod with that of wells with continuous sucker rod. Evaluation is based on downtime reduction.

The conclusion is that continuous-rod-string implementation has reduced production loss caused by centralized sucker rod failures in Guando's deviated wells.

Keywords:
Upstream Oil & Gas, sucker rod, progressing cavity pump, sucker-rod string, guando oil field, Failure Distribution, beam pumping, Downtime, continuous rod, Guando field
Subjects:
Artificial Lift Systems, Beam and related pumping techniques, Progressing cavity pumps
Copyright 2006, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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