American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014 - 114

SpecialReport: Artificial Lift Technology
tom-hole pressure to extremely low levels,
which increases production," Speer reports.
The return on investment is easy to
calculate, he suggests. At an average unit
cost of $210,000-$220,000 and an oil
price of $100 a barrel, the worst-performing wells should achieve payback
on a jet pump installation in a month; the
better performing wells could achieve
payback sooner than three weeks.
According to Speer, Accelerated is offering its jet pumps on a rental basis for
a limited period. If the operator is satisfied
with the run times and equipment performance and chooses to buy the pump,
a portion of the rental may be returned to
the operator.

Field service personnel install new o-rings as they prepare to connect pumps for Baker
Hughes International's ProductionWaveTM system. According to the company, the technology incorporates pumps with significant throughput range, including the ability to
keep pumping at volumes as small as 50 barrels a day.

ated with H2S and paraffin, he notes. Jet
pumps also help with paraffin by maintaining temperatures above the cloud
point to keep paraffin from forming down
hole, he says, noting that a common formula for calculating that temperature is
based on 80 percent of the bottomhole
temperature from the circulation of fluid
and a heat increase of the fluid temperature
going through the throat and diffuser.
According to Speer, jet pumps increased production 28-95 percent for one
operator whose wells were using gas lift
or rod pumps. On the low end, he reports,
one well's daily production jumped from
243 bbl/d to 310 bbl/d, while the most
significant increase came from a well
that produced 130 bbl/d before the jet
pump was installed and 253 bbl/d after.
Speer suggests jet pumps' major Eagle
Ford challenge is stigma. Jet pumps typically use a wellbore's produced water
as power fluid, he explains. "The fluid is
pressurized at the surface by the pump
through the tubing string to the jet pump
nozzle," he describes. "The design has
been around more than 40 years, but
when jet pumps debuted they were something of a novelty."
Early jet pump designs offered few
nozzle and throat combinations, and none
of the sophisticated software now used to
optimize production. "You would throw
a nozzle and throat in there and it might

or might not work," Speer remarks. "Production was going to be erratic. You might
use too much horsepower, applying excessive pressure to the nozzle and throat,
and that could cause cavitation on the intake. There were a lot of problems."
Today's jet pumps offer hundreds of
nozzle and throat combinations, he contrasts and the pumps can handle 30-3,000
bbl/d, depending on the well and the application. "We can fine-tune the production
equipment easily with sophisticated software. We are seeing longer run times, in
most cases as long as 95 percent. We are
optimizing production as the well parameters change by field service personnel
utilizing the software," Speer says.
He goes on to say that Accelerated is
the world's largest provider of hydraulic
artificial lift, and has implemented equipment operations interface software. According to Speer, the EOI software allows
on-site field technicians to input all parameters and conditions on location for
each well on a daily basis. Operators
also have access to this software and can
monitor the equipment's performance to
spot problems, he says, providing constant
details that can greatly increase run times
and optimize production.
Sizing the equipment correctly also
mitigates wear and tear, he observes. "If
we have the right nozzles and throats,
the well is going to draw down the bot-

114 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

ESP System
Bill Vaught, director of global business
development and marketing for Baker
Hughes, suggests ESPs form the hub of
a new integrated technology system for
unconventional plays: the ProductionWave™ system.
Vaught claims the ProductionWave
solution helps deliver better unconventional
well economics with fewer health, safety
and environmental risks than rod lift systems. ProductionWave features the Centrilift FLEXPump™ series of ESPs, which
are designed to produce as little as 50
bbl/d of fluid.
The ESPs can operate at lower flow
rates with high gas conditions in unconventional wells, he describes. "These
wells have very high depletion curves,"
Vaught details. "We are able to economically produce a well from its initial high
rate down to the low rate with the ProductionWave solution and the FlexPump."
Operators generally stop using conventional ESP systems once their wells'
liquids production dips below 300 bbl/d,
he says, but FLEXPump expands the
ESP application range by allowing the
ESP to handle hydraulic thrust more efficiently, Vaught explains.
The wide operating range of the FLEXPump allows the ESP system to adapt to
changing well conditions as production
rates change, Vaught points out. "This
provides the operational flexibility required
in dynamic well conditions to help maximize production and reserve recovery in
unconventional resource plays," he relates.
"It also is appropriate for use in conventional wells and mature oil fields, where
production declines to as little as 50
bbl/d."

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2014

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