Historically, sucker rod pumps (i.e. rod lift) have been the go to lift type for maturing wells in the U.S. It’s not a coincidence that if you Google “artificial lift” on images, the top results you’ll receive are of the iconic pump jacks that have been a symbol of pride for the upstream industry for almost 100 years. But is there a better way to lift mature wells than traditional rod lift?

Issues with Rod Lift

Many wells on rod lift are mature with marginal economics, making it challenging to justify incremental spend on optimization or hardware improvements. While technologies exist to address the mechanical wear & tear that cause many rod pump failures, the amount of resources which can be spent on each individual well is limited. Additionally, monitoring downhole conditions can be expensive to measure and difficult to model, often leading to little understanding of downhole conditions.

Evolving well designs, such as the adoption of deviated wells and pad drilling, have only made the issues listed above more challenging for operators looking to produce more with less, and is likely leading to the decreased interest from our member base to install rod lift.

*Source: IHS Enerdeq; IHS/PacWest analysis; Unconventional Capital analysis
**Darcy Member Feedback on artificial lift system installations

Technologies Looking to Displace Rod Lift Systems

Competing Lift Types

With better technology and controls, gas lift systems are increasingly an attractive alternative to rod lift. Plunger lift equipment is at times introduced into the equation as issues such as liquid loading surface, leading to plunger-assisted gas lift or gas-assisted plunger lift systems. The Artificial Lift forum with Flowco Production Solutions taking place on March 31st covers this topic in more detail.

Another lift type that looks to address some of the issues experienced with highly deviated wells and gas locking is Reveille’s Reciprocating Electric Submersible Pumps (RESP). After presenting their Gas Lift Optimization Controller (GLOC) and RESP last summer, Reveille has received a lot of interest from operators in the U.S. and is actively ongoing further field trials on both the RESP (competing with Rod Lift) and GLOC (for gas lift and gas-assisted plunger lift optimization).

Software Optimization

Vendors in the software optimization space have been expanding to several forms of artificial lift, increasing the viability of different lift types & return on investment. The table below provides insight on providers we’ve recently caught up with in this space. Please note: Green is for actively Commercial, orange for currently piloting, no shading is for developing.

This list is not exhaustive and only includes vendors we've had recent communications with. If you have a question or opinions on innovation that's displacing rod lift, let us know in the comments below.