Pumping Oil:

155Years of Artificial Lift

Robin Beckwith, Senior Features Editor

n 27 august 1859, near

Titusville, Pennsylvania, USA,
Colonel Edwin Laurentine
Drake found rock oil in a well he
deliberately drilled to produce it.
It was not just the oil that ushered
in the modern petroleum era, but also
the rig and tools Drake and his driller,
saltwater-well expert and blacksmith
Uncle Billy Smith, used to drill and
pump the oil from the well.
[T]he production end of the
fedgling oil industry was able to
launch its phenomenal expansion,
writes hydraulic pumping pioneer
Clarence J. Coberly in Production
Equipment (History of Petroleum
Engineering, American Petroleum
Institute, 1961), with the almostidentical tools and techniques that
had been developed in the waterwell industry.
The greatest infuence on the
initial production equipment used
by the oil industry, writes Coberly,
resulted from the cable tools used to
drill the wells: The oscillating walking
beama simple and effective means of
lifting and dropping the bitwas also
well-suited for operating the bottomhole plunger pump once the well was
completed. Both drilling and pumping
loads were small enough to permit
the use of wooden structural elements
with a few pieces of iron to serve as
bearing points. As crude as the rig was,
it was effective and inexpensive.
Coberly also notes that almost all
advances in drilling and producing
methods relied either directly or
indirectly on the use of casing. The
frst cased well was likely in 1861.
Within 10 years of Drakes
discovery, well casing was routine

Schematic of modern conventional pumping unit with major components of the

sucker-rod-lift/beam-pumping system. Source: Petroleum Engineering Handbook,
Vol. IV (ed., Joe Dunn Clegg); SPE: 2007; p 458.
and conventional pumping equipment
was well-established as consisting of
what is now known as the standard
rig front.

History: Sucker-Rod Lift

(Beam Pumping)
Pumping by combining a walking
beam and sucker rods extends back
at least to 476 CE, when the walkingbeam principle was known to have

JPT Special Section

been used in Egypt. In addition,

archeologistswhen excavating
wealthier families homes that existed
in the early days of the Roman
Empirehave found double-acting
pumps, made of cast lead, with
plungers made of wood and leather.
Roman sucker rods were made of
wood and worked in compression.
Used mostly onshore todaywith
a few offshore applicationsit has

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| History of Artificial Lift

A well in operationpumpingusing the standard rig front (circa 1865).

Source: Petrolia: A Brief History of the Pennsylvanian Petroleum Region from
1859 to 1869, by Andrew Cone and Walter R. Johns; New York: D. Appleton and
Co., 1870.
been by far the most common type of
equipment for lifting oil throughout
the last 155 years.

The Standard Rig Front

and Sucker Rods
In 1886, writing in Petroleum and
Its Products, Boverton Redwood
describes a sucker-rod installation
of his time: The working barrel of
the pump is placed at the bottom of
the well on the end of the tubing, a
perforated piece of casing of proper
length, termed the anchor, being
attached to the lower end of the
working barrel.
To the sucker of the pump the
required number of wooden sucker
rods, screwed together, are attached,
the upper end of the string of rods
being connected with the walking
beam. There is, of course, a valve at
the bottom of the working barrel, and
in the sucker. The sucker is provided
with a series of three or four leather
cups, which are pressed against the
working barrel by the weight of the
column of oil.
From 1859, sucker rods were
made of ash or hickory. Iron sucker
rods were introduced in the late
1800s and carbon-steel box-and-pin
rods in the early 1900s. With deeper

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and deeper wells being drilled and

stepped-up pumping demands, the
weight of the iron- or steel-rod string
was recognized as a problem starting
around 1917.
To offset this weight, composites
were used in making rods, and hollow
tubular rods were made. In 1923
one effort to minimize rod failures
involved heat-treating rod ends.
But full normalization, frst done in
1927, was needed. Fully heat-treated
steel sucker rods were commercially
offered starting in 1930.
However, sucker rods remained
a baffing problem. In a 1935 paper
discussing sucker-rod materials
corrosion-fatigue limits, Blaine B.
Wescott and C. Norman Bowers state,
It is a rare occurrence in industry
that the use of such a simple piece of
equipment as a sucker rod presents so
complicated a problem for solution.

usage rose following its frst major

success with the Spindletop well
near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901, and
modest improvements were made up
to around 1915.
From 1915 to 1927 major
changes were made to rotarydrilling equipment, but cable-tool
percussive equipmentand the
standard rig frontmaintained its
hold in the industry. The weight
and power of cable-tool equipment
increased during that period as wells
became deeper.
John H. Suter states in a patent
issued to him in October 1925, In
pumping deep wells, such as oil wells,
a reciprocating pump is commonly
used wherein mechanical motion is
transmitted to the piston by means of
a sucker rod. In such constructions,
because of the great length of
the sucker rod required, various
diffculties are met with. Among
these are stretching of the rod at
each stroke, pulling apart of the rod,
excessive wear on the rod in rubbing
against the casing, weight of the parts
to be moved, and buckling of the rod.
These factors result in decreasing
effciency and breakage of parts.
By 1932with the evolution of
effcient gear-reduction units, which,
in turn, permitted the introduction
of multicylinder, high-speed gasengine prime movers, and with the
development of effcient mobile wellservicing units, which eliminated
the need to provide power and
hoist at each wellthe standard
rig front had given way to beampumping units.

The Rise of the BeamPumping Unit

The Dynamometer:
Understanding RodPumping System Dynamics

The hydraulic rotary drilling system

started being developed and used
during the fnal 3 decades of the 19th
centuryfor drilling water wells and
shallow oil wells in places where
percussive (cable-tool) drilling
could not effectively be used. Its

Transmitting power using sucker

rods continued to increase in
geometric proportion to the greater
depth to which wells were drilled.
This led to groundbreaking analysis
to understand the forces at work
when an elastic rod system moved,

Legends of Artifcial Lift

History of Artificial Lift |

or the loads transferred to the
pumping mechanism.
In a seminal paper, An Oil-Well
Pump Dynagraph (paper API26-094), written in 1935, Walton
E. Gilbert writes, It has become
increasingly obvious that the action of
a pump a mile or more under ground
cannot be accurately understood from
observations made at the surface.
In placing a dynamometer at
the downhole pump, Gilbert proved
conclusively that loss of displacement
in wells located 5,000 ft or below the
surface is generally not due to loss
of stroke but often is attributable to
ineffective separation of gas from the
liquid pumped.
J.S. Montgomery, C.J. Coberly,
J.C. Slonneger, and Emory
Kemler each praised Gilberts
paper, study, and the ingenious
instrument for which no doubt,
many uses not now apparent will
be found.
In his 1937 paper, Vibration
Problems in Oil Wells (paper API37-139), J.C. Slonneger discusses
the relationship between vibration
and the contour of dynamometer
cards. He develops a simplifed
method of calculating sucker-rod
and cable-tool vibration frequencies,
applies the method in developing
a series of theoretical cards, and
compares the theoretic cards with
dynamometer cards from operating
wells. The comparison confrms
the theoretical method.
It was not until the early 1960s,
when Sam Gavin Gibbs produced
a derivation of the wave equation
to model the elastic behavior of
the rod string, that a dynamic
model was developed that took into
account behavior measured over a
period of timewhich is the reality
captured in tracings on dynamometer
cards. Based on the wave equation
arising from Newtonian dynamics
and Hookes law of elasticity, Gibbs
derivation includes the effects
of friction.

The frst patented petroleum-well-related air-lift device, Oil Ejector for Oil
Wells, invented by Thomas B. Gunning (patent no. 45,153, issued 22 November
1864). Source: US Patent and Trademark Offce.
Gibbs work, amplifed and
broadened over the years, has
permeated the industry and is
used today both in diagnosing
problems in existing installations
and in predictive modeling for new
installation design.

History: Gas Lift

Of all the types of petroleum lifting
methods, gas lift is by far the oldest.
This might appear
counterintuitive until one reads
what Silas Frederick Shaw, pioneer
consultant on vertical fow, wrote
in 1927 in Principles of the Air and
Gas Lift (Oil and Gas Journal), [A]
fowing well is a natural gas lift, in

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which the compressed gas is supplied

by nature and is dissolved in, mixed
with, or associated with, the oil in
some form, and issues with the oil.
It would be more accurate, perhaps,
to say that the oil issues with the gas,
since it is the movement of the gas
through the sands and up through the
casing that carries the oil with it. With
the exception of wells caused to fow
by hydrostatic pressure behind the
oil, there would be no natural fowing
of oil in wells if there were no gas
associated with the oil.
The insight to use natural gas
to artifcially control the fow of
petroleum only gradually dawned
on people as general understanding

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| History of Artificial Lift

developed of gaseswhere and how
they occurred, their flow behavior,
and their effect on each other and on
specific liquids and solids.

Beginnings: Air Lift

Throughout the 1800s, methods
were continually being developed
to artificially lift water from water
wells. These were based on the
work of German mining engineer
Carl Emanuel Lscher (17501815),
who had invented a means of
using compressed air to pump
liquids. In 1797, he conducted
several laboratory experiments
with his invention and published a
description of it in a pamphlet titled
AerostatischesKunstgezeug.
It appeared logical to adapt
water-well air-lift methods for use in
petroleum wells.
According to J.H.A. Bone
(Petroleum and Petroleum Wells, 2nd
ed.; Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott
& Co., 1865), compressed air was
used as a way of lifting petroleum
beginning with the Empire #1 well,
the first flowing well (initially
producing 3,000 B/D through natural
flow) whose flow ceased in May
1862, 8 months after completion.
Bone writes that a method of lifting
petroleum from apparently depleted
wells, which is coming into use, and
which has so far proved successful,
isto use an ejector, or air-pump,
with two pipes inserted into the tube
of the well. The air is forced down
one pipe into the vein at the bottom,
and the oil rushes up in a steady
stream through the other. By the
use of these ejectors a number of
wells have been restored to a yield
ranging from thirty to a hundred
and forty barrels daily, after they
had been considered worthless by
theirowners.
Thomas B. Gunning was issued
a US patent on an oil ejector for oil
wells on 22 November 1864. This
invention relates to a new and useful
means for ejecting or forcing oil from

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oil-wells, writes Gunning in his

patent, and is an improvement on the
atmospheric pump recently employed
for that purpose.
Until around 1900, many
engineer-inventors explored means of
improving air lift in petroleum wells.
Other engineers explored how air
liftin theory and in practiceapplied
to promoting the flow of water in
waterwells.
Although air lift was used, it was
not understood. This required an
understanding of what air is. This
was in the process of being discovered
during the petroleum eras first
several decades.
We understand now that
Earths atmospheric air consists
of several gases. There are steady
concentrations, by volume, of
nitrogen (78.084%) and oxygen
(20.946%), along with far smaller
concentrations (in descending order)
of argon, neon, helium, methane,
krypton, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, and
xenon. The most significant gases
present in variable concentrations,
by volume, are water vapor, carbon
dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and
nitrogen dioxide.
However, air used for lifting
oil was generally drawn from a
petroleum wells immediate vicinity.
Therefore, close to the well, the
percentage of gases normally present
in atmospheric air would shift, as
varying percentages of other gases
flowed from the well and into the
ambient atmospheric air. Gases also
present in that ambient air might
include petroleum vapors and natural
gass component gasesmostly
methane, with the possible presence
of ethane, propane, butane, pentane,
carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and/or
hydrogensulfide.
One could thus not predict how,
at atmospheric pressure or under
compression, the ambient airs gases
might interact with each other,
with air-lift and other production
equipment, or with the petroleum.

Legends of Artificial Lift

Transitioning From Air

to Gas Lift
In the Texas and Louisiana coast
fields, developed in 1901, aircompressor plants were installed
in the Gulf coast fields at Sour
Lake, Evangeline, Humble, and
elsewhere to furnish air to pump oil
wells. The air lift has been used
continuously along the Gulf since
then, writes H.C. Miller, a US Bureau
of Mines (USBM) petroleum engineer,
in Gas-Lift Method of Flowing Oil
Wells (California Practice), USBM
Bulletin 323, 1930.
For several years prior to 1911,
Miller states further, the air lift was
also used successfully in the Cat
Canyon field, Santa Barbara County,
California. During 1911 pumping
tests were made that involved the use
of high-pressure natural gas instead
of air to stimulate the flow of oil
from wells, and the author believes
that these tests were the first in
which natural gas was used to lift oil
fromwells.
Throughout the middle
and late 1920s, there was field
experimentation with gas-lift
equipment, parts of which were
often designed and built on the fly
and implemented without patent
application; inventive development of
patented gas-lift valves and systems;
and examination on a theoretical level
of the interplay between gas/oil ratios,
oil gravities, and flow under varying
temperature/pressureconditions.
By 1927, E.O. Bennett (Texas)
and K.C. Sclater (Oklahoma), chief
production engineers at Marland
Oil Co., recognized that One of the
principal reasons for the oil industrys
slowness to adopt gas-lift methods is
due to the poor results first obtained
in trying to use methods of air lift for
raising water in producing oil.
Overall, the most commercially
significant early advances were
made between the early 1920s and
the late 1950s. Alexander Boynton, J.
Oliphant, Halbert B. Havorsen, James

History of Artificial Lift |

W. Taylor, Thomas E. Bryan, Herbert
C. Otis, Charles S. Crickmer, Jeddy
D. Nixon, and Henry Udell Garrett
made the greatest number of gas-lift
equipment improvements between
1923 and 1957, according to Coberly.
The use of natural gas for
fowing wells in place of air,
writes Coberly, was a much more
important development than the
actual mechanical devices used in
the gas-lift method. The use of gas
not only reduced the hazards of the
infammable and explosive mixtures
formed when air is used, but also
made it possible to recover large
quantities of gasoline [condensate]
and LPG [liquid petroleum gas] that
otherwise would have been wasted.

Gas Lift: 1975Present

In 1975, Buford Neely (Artifcial
Lift, SPE Reprint Series 12) defned
the two types of gas lift in existence
then and to this day: Gas lift is a
process of lifting fuids from a well
by continuously injecting relatively
high-pressure gas to reduce the fow
gradient (continuous fow), or by
injecting gas over a relatively short
time period, beneath an accumulated
liquid slug to move the slug to the
surface (intermittent [fow]).
Today, according to Herald
Winkler and Jack Blann (Gas Lift,
Petroleum Engineering Handbook,
Vol. IV, SPE: 2007) the vast majority
of gas-lift wells use continuous fow,
which is very similar to natural fow.
Gas lift is used most successfully
when a signifcant amount of gas is
produced with the crude. In most
cases, gas compressors are installed
to gather the produced gas and, with
minor changes, can be designed
to supply the high injection-gas
pressure for the gas-lift system.
Most continuous-fow wells that
have strong water drive can be truly
depleted by gas lift.
In offshore installations, gas lift
is widely used both from platforms
and subsea, often at todays deepest

ESP installation #1. Phillips Petroleum lease, near Burns, Kansas, 1928. ESP
pioneer, Armais Arutunoff is third from right, shown with the original Reda Pump
Company employees. Courtesy of ESPpump.com.
depths. Gas lift is also used for heavyoil production.
Nitrogen and carbon dioxide are
also sometimes used for gas-lifting
crude oil. Air is still used to lift oil,
but, because of the dangers, on a very
limited scale.

History: Electrical
Submersible (or
Submergible) Pumps
The appearance of oil-productionrelated electrical submersible pumps
(ESPs) coincided with developments
in electrical power generation
throughout the Western world, which
began around 1880 and subsequently
spread, giving rise to the regional
power systems of the 1920s.
The frst patent to show an
oil-production-related electricmotor type pump was issued in
1894 to Harry W. Pickett. Patent
no. 529,804 used a downhole rotary
electric motor operating through a
Yankee screwdriver device to drive a
plunger pump.
The next ESP-related patent
was not issued until 1918, for a
progressive solenoid engine driving
a reciprocating plunger pump.

JPT Special Section

Heretofore, in very deep wells

the rod that is connected to the
piston, and generally known as
the sucker rod, very often breaks
on account of its great length and
the strains imposed thereon in
operating the piston, states inventor
Robert E. Newcomb in his US
patent no. 1,287,078. The present
invention is designed to replace this
rod and to locate the electro-magnetic
engine or piston-actuating device
directly within the well-casing or
the well-barrel itself and locate it so
that the armature of this engine is
directly connected to the piston of
the pump.
Several patents were issued after
that. But it was not until 1926 that the
frst patent for a commercial, operable
ESP was issuedto ESP pioneer
Armais Arutunoff. The cable used to
supply power to the bottomhole unit
was also invented by Arutunoff.
By 1930, Arutunoffs original ESP
inventions were being refned and
offered by the Reda Pump Company.
Reda ESPs were developed that could
handle production rates at depths
that exceeded the capacity of rod
pumps by a factor of 2:1 to 3:1

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| History of Artificial Lift

Schematic of a single-well hydraulic pumping system. Source: Production

Engineering Handbook, Vol. IV (ed., Joe Dunn Clegg); SPE: 2007; p 714.
5,000 B/D at 1,000-ft lift to 1,000 B/D
at 7,000-ft lift.
Primarily invented by Arutunoff,
other ESPs were developed to handle
smaller volumes of fuid under high
pressure, and to handle high volumes
even when fuid levels were drawn
down to a few feet from bottom.
Since Arutunoffs initial
inventions, ESPs have continued
to be used to pump fuid volumes
at high rates. Their operation
is quiet, safe, and clean; they
are often used offshore and
inother environmentally
sensitive areas.
Todays ESP is part of a
downhole unit, suspended by
tubing. It consists of a multistage
centrifugal pump (top) with either
an integral intake or a separate,
bolt-on intake; a seal-chamber
section (middle); and a three-phase
induction motor, with or without
a sensor package. Electricity is
delivered from a surface control
unit to the motor through a threephase power cable running down the
tubing string and ESP unit.

History: Hydraulic-Pump Lift

There are two types of hydraulic
pumps used today in petroleum
artifcial lift: reciprocating hydraulic

106

piston pumps (either single-acting or

double-acting) and jet pumps.

Hydraulic Piston Single- and

Double-Acting Pumps
According to Coberly (1961), in
the 18th century, during the steam
engines early days, [o]ne of the
applications of the steam cylinder
was to operate pumps by directly
connecting the engine piston rod to
that of the pump. This was the basic
idea upon which subsequent variants
of hydraulic pumps were designed.
One of the earliest such variants
was the Bull Cornish pumping engine
of 1798, designed by William Bull
and Richard Trevithick. According
to Arthur M. Greene Jr. (Pumping
Machinery, 2nd ed., 1919), This type
of engine is the one which remained
in use longer than any other, as
it was much simpler than that of
Watt and had all of the elements of
economy. Trevithick and Bull made
a direct-acting steam pump with the
cylinder directly over the well. A
beam was attached to the pump rod,
writes Coberly, to which weight was
applied to balance the rod load.
The frst US patented variant of
this type of pump, for use specifcally
in oil wells, was issued to Hiram W.
Faucett and Alexander T. Comer in

Legends of Artifcial Lift

1872. Faucett was issued another

patent, in 1878, for an invention
that improved the steam-pump
for oil-wells whereby the heat
radiated from the same and the
exhaust-steam may be employed
to prevent the accumulation of
paraffne [sic], bitumen, or other
solid hydrocarbons in the bore of
the well.
Some improvements were
made in hydraulic oil-well pump
design between 1887 and 1905, but
a concerted effort was not made to
devise commercially and widely
operable hydraulic pumps until
the 1920s.
Coberly states that Arthur G.
Gage, with a number of signifcant
patents issued to him between
1925 and 1953, should be credited
with being one of the real pioneers
of hydraulic pumping in the oil feld.
Gage successfully feld-tested his
Gage pump at Santa Fe Springs, Los
Angeles County, California, in June
1924. He, C.H. Williams, and L.M.
Kellogg were issued a patent in 1925
for improvements to deep-well oil
pumps. John H. Suters 1925 patent
for a hydraulically operated deep-well
pump was the frst to show an inserttype pump attached to the inner tube.
This allowed removal of the entire
mechanism by pulling the inner tube
only. Before that, all designs required
pulling both strings of tubing to
recover the pump, thus largely
offsetting the advantages of hydraulic
pumps over rod pumps.
A patent issued to Edwin B.
Galbreath, Long Beach, California,
in April 1927 was for the frst doubleacting hydraulic pump. Several
such pumps were developed in the
following years, three of whichin
addition to Galbreathsproved
operable in the feld.
However, Coberly himself was
the frst to produce and successfully
operate a fully balanced full doubleacting pump. In a classic paper
titled Hydraulic Power Applied to

History of Artificial Lift |

Oil-Well Pumping (API Petroleum
World, 1935), Coberly describes a
pump for which [o]il is used as
the hydraulic fluid. The equipment
includes means for separating gas,
water, and solids from the operating
fluid and a pump for supplying
fluid under high pressure. The
sub-surface unit is a reciprocating
engine direct-connected to a doubleacting reciprocating pump. The unit
is carried by a macaroni string of
tubing and inserts within the regular
production tubing.
The type of pumping system
Coberly describes is called a fixedinsert installation.
In separate patents issued in
1941, Coberly and Gordon Swain
introduced one of the most significant
advantages of hydraulic pumping
systemsfree-pumpinstallations.
As explained by James Fretwell
(Petroleum Engineering Handbook,
Vol. IV; SPE: 2007), Free-pump
installations permit circulating the
pump to the bottom, producing
the well, and circulating the pump
back to the surface for repair or
sizechange.
By the early 1970s,
hydraulic pumping was widely
used, especiallyin deep, highvolumepumping.

Jet Pumps
Fretwell (2007) notes, The most
significant featureof [a jet pump]
is that it has no moving parts;
the pumping action is achieved
through energy transfer between
two moving streams of fluid. Jet
pumps can be adapted to fit into the
same bottomhole assembly used for
hydraulic reciprocating pistonpumps.
With different nozzles and
throats, jet pumps can produce wells
at less than 50 B/D or in excess
of 15,000 B/D. Installation design
calculations are complex and iterative
in nature, requiringcomputer
modeling. Energy efficiency is low.
However, jet pumps are reliable,

Progressing cavity pumps used for food processing. A cutaway shows the steel
rotor positioned with the fixed, elastomeric stator adhered to the steel housing.
Courtesy of Shanley Pump & Equipment.
require little maintenance, and have
unique volume capacities. Since their
commercial introductioninthe1970s,
their usehas increased.

History: Progressing
CavityPumps
Progressing cavity pumps (PCPs) are
based on a gear mechanism invented
by Ren Joseph Louis Moineau
(18871948). Moineaus second
patent, issued in 1937, states it is
for a gear mechanism adapted for
use as a pump, compressor, motor,
or simple transmission device, and
even, simultaneously, for several
suchuses.
The idea has its roots in a
pump for lifting water called the
Archimedean screw. Invented by
Archimedes (287212 BCE), it was
originally used for irrigation in the
Nile delta and for pumping water out
of ships.
The petroleum industry uses the
Moineau mechanism for artificial lift
as well as for downhole mud-motors
that drive the bit.

JPT Special Section

With the concurrent development

of synthetic elastomers and adhesives,
a PCP was introduced in 1936 for
use in the petroleum industry.
The downhole PCP is a positive
displacement pump consisting
of two parts: a helical steel rotor
connected to the bottom of the rod
string and a fixed stator that is
run in to the well on the bottom of
the productiontubing. The stator
consists of an elastomeric shape
formed with a multiple internal helix
matched appropriately to the rotor
configuration. When the surface drive
system rotates the rod string, the rotor
spins within the fixed stator. This
creates the pumping action.
The most common oil industry
PCP system is surface-driven
andincludes the downhole pump;
sucker-rod and production-tubing
strings; and surface equipment,
whichincludes a stuffing box,
wellhead drive, prime mover, and
flowline. PCPs can also bedriven
by an electrical-submersible or
downhole hydraulicmotor. JPT

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