Hi, we have 4 wells with OXY in Reeves County. Do oil companies purposely produce less oil than they can? Does that seem to anyone else to be happening lately?
Maybe for geological or production reasons or takeaway restrictions. Doesn’t make much economic sense to delay payback on what they spent.
@Wade_Caldwell’s comments are accurate. From time to time, there’s possibility that a safety and/or regulatory issue may be at play. In general, the oil company is as interested in turning black gold into dollars as you are.
Operators must always throttle the production of gas and hydrocarbons from a well to fit a profile called an ‘ALLOWABLE’ for the well and lease. This allowable is set by the Texas Railroad Commission. If the well is flowing, the operator throttles the well with the choke to set the static and flow gas rates through the orifice the production engineers recommend…so the well production follows the predicted production curve to maximize economic recovery over the longest term for the benefit of the operator and mineral rights royalty holders.
Ol’ Lawrence in Verhalen
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Thank you so much!
You’re welcome, E.M.
For those of you who have pumping wells on your land…the operator follows a similar production profile…an allowable set by the Railroad Commission of Texas. This is accomplished with physical choke settings, with automation that turns the pumping unit on and off as producible hydrocarbons, brine water, and gas come into the bore of the well. To avoid the well ‘pumping off’, that is the level of the fluid in the bore of the well dropping below the inlet of the rod pump or submersible pump… so the well ‘sucks air’ and drops off in production…automation controls sense the fluid level in the bore and when it gets close to the pump inlet, shuts the well pumping system off until the fluid level climbs in the bore to levels acceptable for further production without harming the equipment. So, this is WHY when you drive by a pumping well and you see it stop pumping…it’s waiting until the fluid level rises in the bore of the well before going back to production pumping. All this monkey motion is coordinated to fit the Railroad Commission ‘allowable’ profile of the well and lease by automated controls and the manual intervention of a human ‘pumper/lease operator’ to maximize efficiency of recovery.
Hope that more clearly explains allowables and the the physical process of the Operators’ personnel to maximize efficiency of the production operations.
ol’ Lawrence in Verhalen
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