I read in the news the other day that America may pass Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. This certainly comes as a pleasant surprise to those of us who lived through previous booms and subsequent busts. It’s kinda like the old West Texas bumper sticker that read, “Lord, give us one more boom, we promise not to waste it away,” or words to that effect.
Many of the ideas for my column are inspired by questions I get from readers and friends in the industry. A few weeks ago, someone asked how to wire in a pressure switch with a pump protection device that required a control relay. The pump protector’s internal relay was rated at 10 amps, sufficient for a 1 horsepower, 230 volt pump but not enough to handle his 3 horsepower pump motor directly, so an additional relay was called for.
Check valves are an important component of every submersible pump water system. In this article, we will talk about the reasons for using check and the different types of check valves, and show which ones are best for submersible applications. And, finally, we will go over the proper placement of check valves in these systems.
In my last column, I talked at some length about selecting screen openings and then ended up by describing one installation method: just driving a pointed screen into a water-bearing formation. Now, I am aware that in this day and age many screens are either threaded or glued directly to the bottom of the casing in a rotary hole. This certainly works, but if the screen has the wrong openings or fails for some other reason either at installation or later, it is impossible to pull. I’m going to limit my comments to screens that can be pulled and would be used in a cable tool or hollow rod drilled well.
In the ’70s, after drilling and pushing tools for a few years, I had every roughneck’s dream. Every roughneck I ever met wants to be a fisherman. They see him sit in his truck, making pretty good money, and they trip pipe. That’s gotta be better, right? Sometimes, but not always.
In the 1950s, I was involved in oil drilling gas in southeastern Kansas. Much of the free-flowing, 28 gravity (thick) oil had diminished to one to three barrels per day. Hence came secondary recovery!
Rig maintenance is an ongoing project for those of us who operate complicated mechanical devices in harsh conditions. Seldom do we get a day when the weather is the same as our living room, but we still need to make the job. Sometimes it is hotter’n west Texas and the radiator boils over before the corned beef hash on the manifold gets done.
These old Fats Domino lyrics, written for a love song, are apropos for the groundwater industry, especially in this era of changing weather patterns and dropping water tables.
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