Guidelines & Recommended Practices

Selection of Artificial Lift Systems

for Deliquifying Gas Wells
Prep Prepared by Artificial Lift R&D Councilcilared
Status
 Document written and edited
 Chair: Cleon Dunham, cleon@oilfieldautomation.com
 Team: Not applicable
 Comments: Not applicable

1.0 Guidelines for Creating an Optimum Artificial Lift Selection

Process

This section addresses the knowledge, information, and experience that a

company and its personnel must have to effectively select, install, operate, and
maintain an artificial lift system for deliquifying gas wells.

The premise of this section is that to be effective in selecting, installing,

operating, and maintaining an artificial lift system, people must have a
comprehensive understanding of their business, their company, and all factors
that relate to operation of their gas wells.

In short, this document attempts to address the following items:

 What you need to know.

 Why you need to know it
 How you get this information.
 Who to network with in industry.

This is particularly important for companies that are short on staff and that need
to make extensive use of contract personnel. Often contract personnel are hired
to perform a limited set of functions; and they don’t have the awareness,
knowledge, and understanding outlined in this section. It is essential for
Company staff to have this awareness, knowledge, and understanding and to
use it to guide the efforts of those who work for them.

This is not a large section. The “meat” of these Guidelines and Recommended
Practices are in Sections 2, 3, and 4. However, this section must not be taken
lightly.

This includes sections on:

1.1 Know Your Business

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This describes the information that must be known on an up-to-date basis

about the business of gas production. It is essential to be current on gas
production policies, practices, technologies, economics, etc.

1.2 Know Your Company

This describes the information that must be known on an up-to-date basis

about your particular company. This includes awareness of your company
mission, vision, strategies, goals, policies, practices, etc.

1.3 Know Your Economics

This describes the factors that must be known about the economics of gas
well production. For instance, in some cases gas well deliquification may be
highly profitable; in other cases, it may be uneconomical.

1.4 Know Your Staff

This describes the knowledge you must have about your Company’s staff;
who they are, where they are, what skills they possess, what limitations they
have, when they must be supplemented by others.

1.5 Know Your Suppliers

This describes the knowledge you must have about your Suppliers; who are
they, what equipment they offer, what support they offer.

1.6 Know Your Reservoirs

This describes the knowledge you must have about your reservoirs; their
recoverable reserves, the primary drive mechanism(s), the static bottom-hole
pressure.

1.7 Know Your Wells

This describes the knowledge you must have about your wells: depth,
tubular sizes, any downhole equipment problems or limitations, static
bottom-hole pressure, flowing bottom-hole pressure, typical production rate.

1.8 Know the Performance of Your Wells

This describes the information you must know about the performance of your
wells; static fluid level, operating fluid level, inflow performance relationship.

1.9 Know Your Surface System

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This describes the information you must know about your surface system
and equipment and how this may affect the selection of artificial lift.

Copyright

Rights to this information are owned by the Artificial Lift Research and
Development Council (ALRDC). This material may be used by any member of
ALRDC in any way they see fit as long as they refer to the ALRDC Artificial Lift
Selection document where it is presented.

Disclaimer

The Artificial Lift Research and Development Council (ALRDC) and its officers
and trustees, (here in after referred to as the Sponsoring Organization), and
the author(s) of this Information and their company(ies), provide this
information "as is" without any warranty of any kind, express or implied, as to
the accuracy of the information or the products or services referred to in the
information (in so far as such warranties may be excluded under any relevant
law) and these members and their companies will not be liable for unlawful
actions and any losses or damage that may result from use of any information
as a consequence of any inaccuracies in, or any omission from, the
information which therein may be contained.

The views, opinions, and conclusions expressed in this information are those
of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Sponsoring Organization.
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