Power fluid pumped down the well accelerates through a nozzle and drags the well fluid up with it. Nothing moves downhole.
Also called hydraulic jet pump · free pump · струйный насос
A hydraulic method with no moving part in the well at all. Power fluid is pumped from surface, accelerated through a nozzle into a throat, and the momentum it gives up carries the produced fluid to surface. The pump itself is a machined insert that circulates out on the power fluid — no rig, no wireline.
That is the whole case for it: depth, heat and deviation are not its problem, and a change-out is a pump truck rather than a workover. Against it stands the surface plant — high-pressure pumps, tanks, treating — and an efficiency in the tens of per cent.
| What | Why it ends the method |
|---|---|
| Free gas at the nozzle | The pump works by converting velocity back into pressure. Gas in the throat destroys that recovery, and there is no version of the pump that tolerates it. |
| The surface power-fluid plant | Pumps, tanks and treating that no other method needs. On a single well it is capital that nothing else shares, and on a pad it is the reason the method becomes affordable. |
| Efficiency | Ten to thirty per cent, which makes it the most expensive method per barrel on energy. It buys intervention cost, not running cost. |
| Dirty power fluid | The nozzle and throat are precision parts in the flow path. Solids in the power fluid cut them, and the treating that prevents it is part of the plant. |
| Installed, before any workover | $115–310k |
| Years between change-outs, before this well's own conditions | 0.5–1.5 |
| One change-out | $8–20k |
| Fixed operating cost a year, energy excluded | $14–24k |
| Fraction of the year it is producing | 95% |
| Standard | Covers |
|---|---|
| API Spec 11D1, Packers and Bridge Plugs, 3rd Edition, April 2015 | Packers and bridge plugs |
| API Spec Q1, Specification for Quality Management System Requirements for Manufacturing Organizations for the Petroleum and Natural Gas Industry | The quality system a manufacturer must hold. In a request this is the line that separates a supplier who can be audited from one who cannot. |
| What has to be bought | Who makes it |
|---|---|
| Jet & hydraulic Jet pumps and hydraulic piston lift | JJ Tech (Jet Pump Technology)SertecpetTally Energy ServicesVortex Tool CompanyWeatherford1 packager, distributor or service company |
| Surface pumps Triplex / power-fluid / horizontal / multiphase surface pumps | Aker SolutionsAlkhorayef PetroleumBaker HughesBharat Pumps & CompressorsFlowserveFramo (Alfa Laval)Gardner Denver (Ingersoll Rand)ITT Bornemannand 16 more who make it · 8 packagers, distributors and services |
| Wellheads Wellheads, stuffing boxes, polished-rod hardware | Black Gold Pump & SupplyBOMCO (Baoji Oilfield Machinery, CNPC)Cavins Oil Well ToolsConfindHilong GroupHunting PLCInnovex InternationalJubail Energy Services Company (JESCO)and 16 more who make it · 3 packagers, distributors and services |
Manufacturers are named first; the whole directory, packagers and services included, is on the suppliers page.
United States. Chosen well by well rather than play by play, which is why no play in this library lists it: post-frac flowback while solids are still coming back, wells too deviated to run a rod string, and remote locations where a surface power-fluid pump can serve several wells.
Canada. The same, and rarer still. Nothing in the Canadian half of this library names it as the method of the play.
Latin America. Where a rig is far away and the well is deviated: Sacha and Shushufindi in Ecuador — the largest hydraulic-lift operation in the region — the mature onshore and nearshore fields of Peru, and Forest and Cruse in Trinidad. The pump circulates out on power fluid, which is worth a great deal when moving a rig means moving a barge.
Middle East. Nothing in this library names it as the method of a play. On high-rate carbonates with compression already in place there is no reason to run a surface power-fluid plant.
Europe & North Sea. Nothing in this library names it as the method of a play. Offshore the power-fluid package competes for deck space against equipment that earns more.
Africa. Nothing in this library names it as the method of a play.
Asia-Pacific. Tarim in western China, where the wells are ultra-deep and hot: the pump has no moving parts to fail at depth and is changed out on power fluid rather than on a rig.
Caspian & Central Asia. Nothing in this library names it as the method of a play here: the Caspian puts submersibles and beam pumps where a jet pump might otherwise go.
No supplier in Caspian & Central Asia for jet & hydraulic; that comes from outside the region.
Electric submersible pump · Gas lift · Plunger lift · Progressing cavity pump · Rod pump