American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2018 - 104

Effect of acid exposure on raw steel, BLAZE™ treated steel, and spraymetal coated steel

Raw Steel

Blaze™ Treated
Steel

Spray-metal Coated
Steel

Senior Vice President of Specialty
Products Anthony Mason emphasizes that
the treatment is 100 percent uniform and
does not affect the original dimensions
or surface finish of the part. "There is no
change in how the product needs to be
manufactured," he adds. "That is a significant improvement over traditional
methods of enhancing equipment's durability, such as spray metal, coatings and
plating, which often require parts to be
undersized before treatment and cleaned
up afterward to reach the desired size."
Since licensing the technology, Mason
says Endurance has commercialized products for plunger and rod lift systems, as
well as motor valve trim kits and other
surface equipment. "We see broad oil
and gas applications for the technology,"
he comments. "While we will be focusing
on artificial lift, we are offering the treatment as a service to companies in other
oil and gas verticals."
Magnificent Material
Through partnerships with operators
and service companies, Materion Performance Alloys reports it is expanding
the artificial lift applications for a durable,
non-galling copper-nickel-tin alloy it originally tested with Hess Corp. to extend
the life of sucker rod couplings.
Its latest development is a valve rod
guide bushing (VRGB) coupling intended
for the bushing that connects the rod
string to the pump drive rod, says Diane
Nielsen, Materion's global oil and gas
manager. "In deep wells that use hollow
rods, buckling at the bottom of the string
causes frequent contact between the bushing and the production tubing," she says.
"This contact wears out the tubing.
"Based on the success Hess had with
sucker rod couplings made from the lowfriction alloy, we decided to replace the

Metal treated with a thermal
boron diffusion process developed for military applications
(middle) has exceptional resistance to mechanical wear,
abrasion and corrosion. Endurance Lift Solutions says the
treatment signiﬁcantly extends
equipment run times and has
a wide range of applications in
artiﬁcial lift and other upstream verticals.

steel material in the bushing with the
alloy," Nielsen continues. "We also wanted
to reduce movement at the bottom of the
rod string, so we made the bushing body
thicker to enable it to act as a stabilizer."
The VRGB coupling has performed
well in the field, Nielsen reports. "We
have 12 operators in various plays, including the Bakken, the Permian and the
West Coast Basin, that are adopting it.
They tell us it is significantly reducing
tubing leaks and wear while providing
more stabilization."
Other companies are looking to use
the alloy in subs containing downhole
sensors for measuring compression, pressure, temperature, torque and tension,
Nielsen reports. "By installing these sensor-containing subs throughout the rod
string, operators will be able to understand
what is going on down hole, including
when the rod string is coming into contact
with the production tubing, which is a
major cause of wear," she says. "This
will help operators modify their string
designs to optimize pump efficiency and
minimize wear."

104 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

To protect production tubing
from buckling-induced wear in
deep wells with hollow rods,
Materion Performance Alloys
has introduced a coupling for
the bushing that connects the
rod string to the pump drive
rod. The company says the
coupling uses a wide design
to reduce buckling and, therefore, contact with the production tubing. It is made from a
low-friction alloy that minimizes damage when contact
occurs.

Nielsen adds that ESP providers are
considering using the low-friction alloy
in motor bearings. "We have several companies that are doing lab testing and qualification on the alloy and a manufacturer
that has qualified the alloy for production,"
she details. "They believe the same attributes that have made the alloy so successful in sucker rod applications-the
combination of low friction and high fatigue strength-can improve bearing performance and ultimately the ESP's efficiency and production."
Smooth Flow
ESPs and rod pumps benefit from
consistent fluid delivery, observes Brian
Ellithorp, president of Echometer UPS
(Ultimate Production System). He says
achieving such consistency can be difficult
in horizontal wells. Even relatively straight
laterals have low points that collect liquid
and high points that collect gas, he points
out, creating a situation where the gasto-liquids ratio at the pump tends to swing
back and forth.
To minimize those swings' negative
effects, operators try to separate gas and
liquids ahead of the pump. Unfortunately,
that effort does nothing to address the
root problem of slugging, which Ellithorp
notes can outpace a separator's ability or
make it difficult to keep the pump full.
Putting the pump in or through the curve
can help in some instances, but that frequently shortens its life so much that it
causes a significant increase in maintenance costs, he relates.
As an alternative, Ellithorp recommends combining a separator with an
isolated tailpipe that extends into the
curve and has a small inner diameter,
much smaller than the production casing.
The smaller diameter increases the production stream's flowing velocity and
causes the gas and liquid mix to supersede
required critical velocity, which makes
flow more uniform while gasifying the

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2018

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