August 28-31
Bush Convention Center | Midland, TX
This August, oil & gas professionals from all over the world will gather in Midland, Texas for four days of continuing education, technical sessions, panels, 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
This year's Sucker Rod Pumping Workshop offers a variety of one and two day courses that oil and gas operators and producers with every level of experience are sure to find valuable.
Data Analytics Applications in Rod Pumping
Tuesday, August 29th
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
Dr. 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
Tuesday, August 29th
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.
Instructors
Chris is a Sucker Rod Pump Optimization Lead for Occidental where he has been employed for 17 years. His experience has been with artificial lift design, surveillance, analysis, and optimization, with a focus on sucker rod pumping. He has 9 years of leading teams in these disciplines and most recently leading the sucker rod pump optimization team for Occidental onshore assets. Chris has taught in house trainings for Occidental for the last 10 years focusing on sucker rod pumping. He has also taught at sucker rod pump analysis and optimization at the SWPSC. He holds a bachelors degree from Texas Tech University.
Courtney has been with Oxy since 2016. Her early career experience with data management for well servicing operations triggered deep interest in understanding failure data. This guided her path to the QA/QC Artificial Lift team which is heavily involved in RCFA process standardization. A primary function of QA/QC is understanding lift equipment through its life cycle, from manufacturing to failure mode. This requires a heavy collaboration with manufacturers, engineers, lift design experts, and well servicing teams to increase run times by learning how to mitigate specific failure mechanisms. She is a proponent of standardizing the methods by which data is captured in order to reap the full benefit of analytics and make sound operational decisions based on data.
Kristen Barnes is a graduate of West Texas A&M with a degree in Engineering Technology. She began her career with ChampionX, 8 years ago in the Unconventional Resources Development Program. For 6 years she managed and maintained chemical programs in Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2 and Water Flood) fields and 2 years in unconventional fields. During this time, she played vital roles in the RCFA process for those assets by helping the producers understand and identify different corrosion types and the different methods of application of chemical. She currently leads a sales team in the Delaware basin for ChampionX.
Rodney Sands has 42 years of experience in oil well rod pumps and has been with Harbison-Fischer, Inc. for over 30 years. During that time, he has become a subject matter expert on rod pumps and specializes in the technical presentation of down-hole rod pumping conditions and failure analysis.
In the last 14 years, Rodney has had a major emphasis on technical training. He conducts field schools and leads Harbison-Fischer’s Sucker Rod Pump Training Course, a three-day pump seminar at the corporate manufacturing facility in Crowley, TX.
Rodney has authored or co-authored several papers for the Southwest Petroleum Short Course. He has also presented numerous times at the Artificial Lift Fall Forum, ALRDC Workshops and the Wolfberry Forum in Midland, TX, as well as other related industry events.
Anthony Allison is a Senior Artificial Lift Advisor for Occidental, where he provides in-house support for the analysis, optimization, and troubleshooting of sucker rod pumps for Occidental’s operations globally. He has sixteen years of experience with sucker rod pumping systems and currently serves as chairman of API Subcommittee 11, which oversees standards related to artificial lift equipment. Anthony is a recipient of the SPE Regional Production and Operations Award, has previously served as chair of the SPE Artificial Lift Conference and Exhibition-Americas, and was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer for 2020–2021. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering Technology and master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering, both from Texas A&M University.
Scott’s primary responsibilities with TRC are Rod String Design(RODSTAR) for (Steel, FG and continuous rod) and make rod guide recommendations. He trains string designers to provide consistent designs from TRC. He provides written Failure Analysis for sucker rods for various operators. He participates in failure meetings several times a month to support our product, troubleshoot repeat failures and recommend solutions. Scott has also served on the API 11B committee for over ten years, and taught Failure Analysis and Corrosion Inhibition classes SWPSC, ALEOC and customer locations for about 20 years.
Incomplete Pump Fillage – Gas Interference, Fluid Pound, Blocked Intake
Monday, August 28th
“LONG AND SLOW” OR “SHORT AND FAST” is NOT the way to go! The way to go is to apply recommended practices to operate your wells, do not operate your wells with incomplete pump fillage more than 2% of the time. When a failure occurs then identify the cause and strive to prevent a repeat occurrence of the failure in the future. The three causes of incomplete pump fillage can be accurately diagnosed by using representative dynamometer and fluid level surveys. The magnitude of the pump loads w/ respect to the zero load line, Fo from the Fluid Level, and the Fo Max Load can be used to identify the cause of incomplete pump fillage. The pressure inside the pump chamber is a function of plunger travel and compressibility of fluid in the pump. Sucker rod pumps intake well fluids through the standing, SV, and discharge fluids into the tubing through the traveling, TV.
Instructors
O. Lynn Rowlan education includes a Bachelor and Masters of Science degree in Civil Engineering graduating in 1976 from Oklahoma State University. Mr. Rowlan was registered as an Oklahoma Professional Engineer July 1980 and received: the 2000 J.C. Slonneger Award from the, SWPSC, SW Petroleum Short Course Association, Inc; the 2010 SPE Distinguished Production Operations Award; the 2011 SWPSC Crawford Service Award; and the SPE 2020 SPE Legend of Artificial Lift Award.
During the 43 years of experience in the Oil & Gas industry Mr. Rowlan has authored more than eighty research works/papers for the SWPSC, ASME, the Solution Mining Research Institute, the Artificial Lift Research and Development Counsel, the Russian Oil & Gas Technologies Magazine, the Canadian Petroleum Society and the Society of Petroleum Engineers. He co-authored a book for gas well production optimization “Gas Well Deliquification” holds a US Patent # 6,634,426 on Plunger Lift Analysis. Beginning in September 2019 Mr. Rowlan retired from the position of Vice-president of Engineering for Echometer Company and now works as a consultant. His primary interest is to advance the technology of all artificial lift production systems and to present seminars and talks on the efficient operation, analysis, optimization, and troubleshooting of oil and gas wells.
Failure Management through Effective Chemical Applications
Monday, August 28th
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
Becky Ogden is a consultant with Martin Water Labs in Midland, TX. In an oil and gas career spanning over 40 years, Becky has worked with Champion Chemicals, Marathon Oil, and Multi-Chem in various functions ranging from manufacturing, quality control, lab-analysis, non-destructive testing, fabrication, internal/external coating systems, application and monitoring of production chemicals, and technical training. She has presented multiple technical papers in SWPSC and ALRDC and has co-authored a patent and is a certified Process Hazards Analysis Leader in the HAZOP and What-If formats. SWPSC awarded her the Duane A Crawford award in 2019 for long and outstanding service.
She has taught technical schools addressing corrosion, chemical program optimization, water chemistry, analytical testing, chemical selection, and chemical program monitoring. Becky has a long history with the SWPSC, a NACE member (now known as AMPP) since 1983 and has served on several technical committees/task groups and the Permian Basin Chapter. Becky holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Angelo State University.
Rod Pumping Fundamentals and Dynamometer Analysis
Monday, August 28th & Tuesday, August 29th
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.