Preventive Maintenance for Beam Pumping Equipment

Abstract

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc. This paper was prepared for the Improved Oil Recovery Symposium of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Tulsa, Okla., March 22–24, 1976. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Introduction A preventive maintenance (PM) program has been established in the southeastern New Mexico portion of Continental Oil Co.'s production department operation. The PM system has been in operation for 12 months and covers over 2,000 separate pieces of major surface equipment. The concept of preventive maintenance is not new in production operations; however, most operating organizations incorporate PM and operations in one organization. The primary disadvantage of this type of set-up is the secondary priority PM receives. Day-today operating problems normally receive first priority and PM work is done after "emergencies" are handled. For that reason, Conoco's "PM" organization has been separated from the "operations" organization. Preventive maintenance is the systematic inspection, cleaning, lubrication, and servicing of equipment. The objective of PM is to prevent malfunctions and breakdowns, with the result that all mechanical equipment will work as well and as long as it should with minimum repairs. Operations include those tasks that have to be done to efficiently produce oil and gas wells, to monitor and control oil-field facilities, to answer alarms, and to assure that environmental and safety standards are maintained. An efficient production operation must give equal priority to operational tasks and PM. This paper deals only with the PM for beam pumping equipment. However, the procedures followed in establishing the PM for the beam pumping equipment are essentially the same for all pieces of equipment included in this project. PM ORGANIZATION The PM work for all of the equipment covered is under the direction of a PM foreman. Four two-man crews and a test engineer are assigned to the PM production foreman. Two of these crews handle PM on waterflood equipment; one crew is assigned tank battery equipment; and pumping units are serviced by the fourth two-man team. The test engineer uses specialty test equipment such as vibration analyzers on all equipment in the field. Each PM team also handles "breakdown" repair work to the equipment assigned to them.