August 28-31
Bush Convention Center | Midland, TX

Next August, oil & gas professionals from all over the world will gather in Midland, Texas for four days of continuing education, technical sessions, panels, breakouts, and more. Join us as we share new insights and emerging trends, explore best practices, and discuss the latest advancements in sucker rod pumping technology and optimization. You'll discover new and leading products and services in the nearby exhibitor hall, and enjoy ample opportunities to network with individuals from diverse professional backgrounds.

All you want to know about beam pumping...

New technology
R&D
Design
Automation
Optimization
Challenges
Case studies
Field experiences
Best practices
and more!

Call for Abstracts

Knowledge-sharing presentations and interactive sessions led by operators and innovators in artificial lift empower generations of ongoing industry success. White papers and case studies resulting in improved or optimized production, reduced operating costs or failures, overcoming challenges, or discovery of new and innovative techniques or products related to sucker rod pumping are being collected. Submit an abstract today for consideration as a technical presentation at the upcoming Sucker Rod Pumping Workshop!

Continuing Education

Data Analytics Applications in Rod Pumping

Data analysis means cleaning, inspecting, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering new, useful information and supporting decision-making. In this hands-on course, participants will learn some data techniques and workflows applied to rod pumped wells while reviewing code and practicing. The focus will be on the development of data-driven models while keeping our feet closer to the rod pumping’s basic principles. This one-day (two half-day-sessions) course discusses use cases specific to rod pumped wells and related facilities. The course is primarily intended for production and facilities engineers to enhance knowledge base, technology awareness and of different data analysis techniques that can be applied on large data sets. After completing the course, participants will have a set of tools and some pathways to analyze and manipulate their own data in the cloud, find trends, and develop data-driven models.

Instructor

Rajan Chokshi works as an artificial lift and production ‘Optimizer’ for Accutant Solutions. He has over 36 years of experience working with a national oil company, research consortia, consulting and software firms, and a service company in various roles: engineer, software developer, project manager, trainer, consultant, and senior business leader. He has co-authored over fifteen SPE papers and holds two US patents. He has served on the SPE training and global production award committees and several technical committees for the SPE ATCE and artificial lift conferences. He has co-chaired an SPE artificial lift workshop, an SPE forum on production issues in unconventional, and an SPE multiphase flow metering workshop. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer twice for the 2015-2016 and 2018-2019 years. Dr. Chokshi has worked on global projects in multiphase flow, artificial lift, production optimization, data analysis with real-time production monitoring. Besides delivering several SPE webinars, ALRDC, and SPE training globally, he has taught artificial lift at Texas Tech, Missouri S&T, Louisiana State, U of Southern California, and U of Houston. Dr. Chokshi has conducted seminars, bespoke trainings / workshops globally for practicing professionals in over 35 countries in-person and (recently) virtually. Dr. Chokshi holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s in chemical engineering from the Gujarat University and IIT-Kanpur, India; and a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa, USA.

Root Cause Failure Analysis

Root cause failure analysis is the key to identifying appropriate solutions to problems with single well repairs as well as systemic problems within a lease, asset, or specific well population. Establishing a comprehensive RCFA process with the appropriate foundations is essential to ensuring producers are maximizing the knowledge gained from historical failures. This course presents they key items needed to create and maintain a proper RCFA program. It will cover the foundations of a proper program, the important information needed for a proper RCFA to be conducted, recognition of failure mechanisms for the different components in an SRP system, as well as some possible solutions for those failures.

Instructor

Bio coming soon.

Rod Pumping Fundamentals and Dynamometer Analysis

This comprehensive, course offers real-world training by industry experts for optimization, design and best practices. The training course will provide all attendees with an all-encompassing understanding of the rod pumped system to allow for improvements in optimization techniques to achieve additional production, runtimes, and minimized failures.

Instructors

Matt Raglin began working for Diagnostic Services (DSI) in 1985, traveling and analyzing rod pump wells first in the United States and later globally until it was purchased by Halliburton. In 1989, Raglin formed his first company, Reservoir Evaluation Services, which continued his work in the rod pump system analysis field. RES was sold to Wood Group in 1995. From 1995 to 2001, Raglin was an independent consultant for rod pump analysis and design and he worked with many of the largest producers in the industry, including Shell, BP, Exxon, Occidental and Chevron. In 2001, Raglin began working for Lufkin Automation as the General Manager of Permian Operations. It was here he began a close working relationship with Dr. Sam Gibbs and Ken Nolen and was instrumental in helping design and introduced the industry to the SAM Controller, which is now used worldwide. Raglin left Lufkin and formed Spirit Global Energy Solutions in 2008. Headquartered in Midland, the primary focus of Spirit Global was analyzing wells with portable dynograph and fluid level equipment. The company also provided remote analysis utilizing a SCADA host. Wanting to provide additional solutions to the industry, Raglin invented several patented downhole tools to mitigate gas and sand issues and a laser positioning device. Spirit Global also released the Genesis Controller, which is now known as the ChampionX Smarten Controller, under Raglin's guidance. Spirit Global had offices in every producing basin in the United States as well as regional operations in Canada. The company was purchased by Dover Artificial Lift in 2013 and now operates as ChampionX. Raglin formed WellWorx Energy in 2018 with a mission to offer in-person trainings and webinars focusing on rod pump principles and best practices as well as dynagraph interpretation. These education-based solutions were taken a step further and he began to design and patent the ToolWorx product line of downhole tools. Raglin currently holds 14 patents and his designs are focused on gas and sand mitigation efforts. The product line includes the Super Max System, the Helix Sand ByPass, the Halo, the Dominator and the ESP Gas ByPass with additional products planned for the future. Seeing additional needs within the industry, Raglin purchased GreenShot LLC from Dr. Sam Gibbs and Ken Nolen. GreenShot is patented as the first fully permanent and automated fluid level system. It is also the only true 'green' system in existence, functioning without high-pressure nitrogen or C02 and instead utilizing the well's naturaly-producing casing gas. In the last 25 years, Raglin has taught hundreds of Rod Pump classes across the world. Throughout his career, Raglin has published more than a dozen technical papers and is partnered with multiple Texas universities to organize internships with field training as well as served as a guest lecturer to offer insight into the petroleum industry.

Ken Nolen

Kenneth B. (Ken) Nolen attended Texas A&M College and graduated in 1957 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. Upon graduation, he joined Shell Oil Company as a Production Engineer. His career was temporarily halted for three years while he served in the U.S. Air Force as a Weather Officer at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor, Maine. Returning to Shell, he gained further experience in artificial lift as production engineering section head. In 1970, he left Shell and teamed up with Dr. S. G. Gibbs to become co-founder and Vice President of Nabla Corporation, a high-tech services and manufacturing firm in Midland, Texas. While there, he pursued his career-long passion of optimizing production from artificially lifted wells. Lufkin Automation acquired Nabla in August 1997. Nolen continued his career as Technical Coordinator for the new firm until his retirement in 2002. Retirement was short lived and he started working as an artificial lift consultant specializing in technical support and training. Again, Nolen and Dr. Gibbs teamed up in 2014 and formed GreenShot LLC, a company specializing in automated oil well fluid level technology. WellWorx Energy acquired GreenShot in 2018 and Nolen is currently employed by WellWorx as R&D Advisor. Nolen has been a key contributor to the art and science of artificial lift his entire career. He was a co-developer with Dr. Gibbs of wellsite diagnostic methods (dynamometers, fluid level sounders and pump-off controllers) for sucker rod pumping systems. These diagnostic methods are widely used within the industry to remotely access data through automated continuously monitoring systems. Nolen has been active in SPE his entire career and is a registered professional engineer emeritus in Colorado and New Mexico. He has eight patents, has written textbooks on artificial lift subjects and has written or co-written numerous technical papers to serve the industry. In the past 50 years, Nolen has taught more than 200 schools on artificial lift (mainly rod pumping technology) throughout the world.

Failure Management through Effective Chemical Applications

Oilfield products are highly corrosive, and many rod pumping failures due to corrosion cause significant productivity and profitability loss. Effective application of chemicals helps to mitigate and manage corrosion, which results in reduced failure rates, increased uptime and ultimately improved profitability. In this highly practical course taught by a seasoned instructor, the trainees will learn the problem solving process to failure analyses from gathering the evidence, field investigation, analysis and evidence validation to report.

Instructor