TY - THES

T1 - Advanced Approach of SRP Downhole Dynamometer Evaluation - Proof of Concept

AU - Gattuso, Elisa

N1 - embargoed until 20-05-2026

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - The most widely used artificial lift method in the petroleum industry is the sucker rod pump. Proper surveillance of these systems is vital to determine a pump´s status and the production of a well. Surface dynamometry is heavily dependent on the interpretation skills of the field engineer. In addition, the dynamograph retrieved at the surface does not represent the actual pump status downhole since it also depicts static and dynamic forces of the rod string. Therefore, algorithms have been postulated to obtain information about the actual pump performance in the borehole, the so-called synthetic pump cards. This work aims to analyse and compare a standard software on the market to a novel software application by RAGSOL. The study’s primary focus is comparing the calculated downhole dynamometers for both applications, based on surface dynamometers of three existing oil wells in a field in Upper Austria. Initially, proof for the validity of the used algorithm in RAGSOL’s software is described using MATLAB. The observations reported here show that RAGSOL’s software application, based on Everitt and Jennings’ algorithm, is a meaningful method to obtain the pump’s status and production information. The comparison study manifests that it also shows the benefit of a more user-friendly application due to a remarkable reduction of input parameters compared to the standard software, which effectively will save time and money in the long run. An additional field study was conducted for ten oil wells located in Upper Austria to underline these findings. For the inspected ten wells, analysis and recommendations have been made based on the RAGSOL’s software results, proving its importance for evaluating the artificial lift system and discussing improvements towards visualization of those results.

AB - The most widely used artificial lift method in the petroleum industry is the sucker rod pump. Proper surveillance of these systems is vital to determine a pump´s status and the production of a well. Surface dynamometry is heavily dependent on the interpretation skills of the field engineer. In addition, the dynamograph retrieved at the surface does not represent the actual pump status downhole since it also depicts static and dynamic forces of the rod string. Therefore, algorithms have been postulated to obtain information about the actual pump performance in the borehole, the so-called synthetic pump cards. This work aims to analyse and compare a standard software on the market to a novel software application by RAGSOL. The study’s primary focus is comparing the calculated downhole dynamometers for both applications, based on surface dynamometers of three existing oil wells in a field in Upper Austria. Initially, proof for the validity of the used algorithm in RAGSOL’s software is described using MATLAB. The observations reported here show that RAGSOL’s software application, based on Everitt and Jennings’ algorithm, is a meaningful method to obtain the pump’s status and production information. The comparison study manifests that it also shows the benefit of a more user-friendly application due to a remarkable reduction of input parameters compared to the standard software, which effectively will save time and money in the long run. An additional field study was conducted for ten oil wells located in Upper Austria to underline these findings. For the inspected ten wells, analysis and recommendations have been made based on the RAGSOL’s software results, proving its importance for evaluating the artificial lift system and discussing improvements towards visualization of those results.

KW - Sucker Rod Pump

KW - Dynamometry

KW - Downhole Dynamometer

KW - Effective Stroke Length

KW - SPM

KW - Production Surveillance

KW - Gestängetiefpumpe

KW - Dynamogramm

KW - Untertage Dynamogramm

KW - Effektive Hublänge

KW - Hübe pro Minute

KW - Produktionsüberwachung

M3 - Master's Thesis

ER -