Abstract
Daleel Petroleum Company is operating in block 5 in north of Oman producing light oil from relatively tight carbonate reservoir. Beam Pump (BP) and Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESP) are the two used primary artificial lifting systems with around 450 beam pumps contributing about 56% of the company's net oil production.
Rod and tubing failures are two of the main challenges faced in the beam pump performance especially that caused by metal to metal contact which contributed with around 15% of total failures. When the pump is running and during the pumping cycle up and down stroke, it is possible that sucker rods and tubing to have wear and erosion on rod couplings or/and tubing especially in deviated section. This erosion between rod and tubing will lead to parted rod or mechanical tubing leak situation. Therefore, run life of beam pump completion is affected, which increases operation cost and also increases loss production due to downtime. The well then need to be attended by a workover unit to replace a beam pump downhole completion.
In order to mitigate such failure issue, few proactive options were considered and implemented in Daleel. Rod centralizers was initially used, but did not show a good improvement. The molded guided rod was then introduced to Daleel in 2016 as another solut ion to minimize the failure rate. The sucker rod string is equipped with rod guides that help to stabilize the sucker rod string and to prevent the contact between rods and tubing. Promising results were seen after application of guided rods and it was decided to use guided rods in all upcoming new wells and in old wells during replacement. From 2022 Daleel has started installing downhole pump deeper in m ore deviated tangent sections more than 60 degrees and relatively high dogleg severity. The guided rod has helped in successful implementation of deeper beam pump installations and open the door for further production enhancement in block 5.
As a result of guided rod implementation, a significant reduction in rod/tubing failure rate from 15 % to < 7% was observed. Application of guided sucker rods also has helped to improve beam pump run life performance.
