Guidelines & Recommended Practices
Selection of Artificial Lift Systems
for Deliquifying Gas Wells
P Prepared by Artificial Lift R&D Council
1.4 Know Your Staff
This describes the knowledge you must have about your Company’s staff:
Who they are, where they are, what skills they possess, what limitations they
have and when they must be supplemented by others. See also Section 1.2
on “Know Your Company.”
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Numbers
This seems obvious but it is important to know not only the number of
staff in your company available to work on artificial lift, but also their
actual availability. In some cases (perhaps many cases) there are not
enough staff to fully support artificial lift and people resources must be
found elsewhere. In other cases, there may be enough people (on paper) but they may actually be doing other things. The bottom line is,
how many people can actually be counted on to help implement, operate, and maintain artificial lift systems in your company.
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Experience level
Clearly numbers of people is not the only issue. It is important that the
people who are available have the experience and knowledge to be effective. To determine this, you must know your people. If merely
knowing them isn’t sufficient, you may wish to institute a testing, assessment, and qualification process whereby people can be tested to
demonstrate their knowledge and ability. If there is an interest in having an artificial lift assessment and qualification process, this can be an
area where ALRDC may be able to help.
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Willingness to learn, change
Some companies have a “learning” culture where people are willing to
learn new skills. And some companies have people who are “stuck in
their ways” and are not interested in learning. This is important to
know. Again, use of an assessment and qualification process may
help to determine if the current staff is interested in learning new capabilities that may be required to effectively implement, operate, and
maintain artificial lift.
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Trends – growing, staying level, shrinking
Selection of Artificial Lift Systems for Deliquifying Gas Wells
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What are the trends in staff count in your company? In many cases,
there is pressure from management to reduce staff counts. If this is
the case, it may be more important than ever to make the remaining
people as effective as possible.
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Resources – training, staff development
What resources are available in your company for artificial lift training
and staff development? Many companies no longer have internal
training departments and must rely on outside trainers or training services.
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Resources required for project, number of wells, geography, type of lift,
etc.
What staff resources are required for the size of your field(s), the number of wells, the type of geography you must cover, and the type(s) of
artificial lift you are using? There is too often a tendency to try to operate with too few staff. This results in inadequate surveillance and
maintenance. If there aren’t sufficient staff resources available in your
company to properly operate and maintain your artificial lift system,
you may need to consider bringing in outside (third party) operators to
help out.
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Expertise available – experts vs. generalists – design vs. application
What level of expertise do you have available in your company? To
make the most economically effective use of most artificial lift systems,
people must be well versed in ways to design, apply, troubleshoot, and
optimize your artificial lift installations. It may be possible to train existing staff to obtain these skills. If this doesn’t look promising, or if there
aren’t staff available to become skilled, either new forms of artificial lift
shouldn’t be used, or the necessary skilled people should be hired or
brought in on a contract basis.
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Are people, with the right knowledge and motivation, available to make
the system work?
This is a somewhat different question. There may be people in your
organization who have the right knowledge and skills, but are they
available to work on your project and make your system work?
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Bias of operators
In some cases, field operators may be biased for or against a particular
type of artificial lift. This may be based on previous experience, or on
Selection of Artificial Lift Systems for Deliquifying Gas Wells
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other input they may have received. Often the only way to overcome
this bias is by providing them with positive experiences with the unknown artificial lift system. In some cases, it may be sufficient to have
them talk with other operators in your company who do have good experiences and who are trusted by the people with the bias.
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Buy-in by operators, engineers, others
We’ve all heard that for any system to work, it must have the buy-in of
the operators, the engineers, and others. The surest way to failure is if
the operators don’t want it to work. It may be difficult to determine if
the operators or engineers are against a system, but this must be
known and addressed if it does exist. The best way is to thoroughly
discuss the project, or the new artificial lift system, with the operators
and listen to and address all of their concerns.
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Believers vs. non-believers
Sometimes, even with the best of plans and discussions, there will be
people who don’t believe in the new system. Sometimes they can be
coerced to accept it, but this is almost always counter productive. In
extreme cases, it may be necessary to move people who refuse to
work with a new system, if this system is deemed to be necessary for
the desired operation.
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Mis-information about requirements for operation, surveillance, etc.
It can be a major concern if there is mis-information among your staff
about the requirement for operation, surveillance, and optimization of
your artificial lift system(s). One way to address this is with proper
training conducted by company or third-party trainers.
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Change management
If it is necessary to adopt a new form of artificial lift or improve the operation of an existing system, changes may be required in your staff,
your training process, etc. Some companies have an existing change
management process that can address these needs, and some companies resist change. What is the stance on change management in
your company?
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Neglect – is company focus on other projects?
A concern in some companies is neglect. The company may be focused on oil rather than gas, drilling new wells, or other activities. If
this is the case, there may not be sufficient focus on use of artificial lift
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for gas well deliquification. One way to address this is by a concentrated process of education. It may be necessary to educate management concerning the value of placing sufficient focus on gas well
deliquification.
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Communication problems
Last but certainly not least is the area of communications. How are
problems and needs communicated in your company? Do people
have the right communication tools, the right access to these tools, and
the “ear” of the right people?