Downhole maintenance costs approach $2 billion

Producers will spend nearly $2 billion during 1977 to keep some 519,000 U.S. oil wells on stream. These costs do not include completing new wells or expenditures on gas wells. At least $753 million will be spent to repair failures of artificial lift and downhole tubulars. Another $1.1 billion will be spent to work over 105,000 producing oil wells for stimulation, recompletion, and other forms of downhole modification. This forecast is based on a second quarter 1977 survey of operators covering 8 major producing areas of the nation. Mean failure rates and costs of different failure types were calculated and applied to known well distributions within each of the 8 areas. Tabular data shows distribution of 518,867 U.S. oil wells. Of these 481,146 or 92.7% are being lifted artificially. These are further broken down into 85.2% rod pump, 10.8% gas lift, 2% submersible pump, and 2% hydraulic pump. Approximately 383,000 of the artificial lift wells are strippers, producing 10 bpd or less. Abandonments of stripper wells has decreased 22% from 13,000 in 1975 to 10,100 wells in 1976. Should this decline trend continue, fewer than 9,000 wells will be abandoned during 1977. Some 85% of artificial lift wells are rodmore » pumped.« less