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Fundamentals of Rod Pumping
& Dynagraph Interpretation
An intensive 2 day course at Odessa College in Odessa, Texas.
Tuesday-Wednesday
March 24-25, 2026
This class combines technical knowledge with years of field experience analyzing and optimizing rod pumped wells (along with the bad days that come with it, including the story that goes along with my pick-up getting covered in oil from a blown out stuffing box) to bring you the industry’s most interesting, practical, and comprehensive course on sucker rod pumping.
There’s still time to reserve your seat to learn about the Fundamentals of Rod Pumping and Dynagraph Interpretation.
See the course description below…
Course Descriptions
**NEW COURSE**
Fundamentals of Gas Lift
Gas lift is often taught as a downhole equipment subject or a valve-spacing calculation. In actual field operations, however, the performance of a gas-lifted well depends on the interaction of the reservoir, producing wellbore, gas-lift valves, surface pressures, flowlines, separators, compression equipment, and injection-gas network.
This course teaches gas lift as a complete and connected production system:
Reservoir → Wellbore → Gas-Lift Valve → Surface Facilities → Compression → Injection Network
Students begin with the physics that make gas lift possible: pressure, fluid gradients, multiphase flow, reservoir inflow, tubing outflow, and the effect of injected gas on the producing pressure gradient. The course then progresses through surface and downhole equipment, gas-lift valve mechanics, valve force balances, unloading, continuous-flow design, surveillance, troubleshooting, economics, and system optimization.
The objective is not simply to teach students how to perform a gas-lift calculation. It is to give them the engineering foundation needed to understand why a gas-lift system behaves as it does, determine whether the well is operating as intended, identify the true source of a performance problem, and make technically and economically sound operating decisions.
Who Should Attend
This course is intended for:
- Production engineers
- Artificial-lift engineers
- Field and operations engineers
- Production foremen and supervisors
- Gas-lift technicians
- Lease operators with engineering responsibilities
- Facilities and compression personnel supporting gas-lift operations
- Engineers transitioning from rod pumping, ESPs, or flowing-well analysis
No previous gas-lift experience is required. Students should have a basic understanding of pressure, depth, tubing, casing, fluid production, and well-completion terminology.
What Students Will Learn
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Explain where the lifting energy in a gas-lift system comes from and how injected gas reduces the producing pressure gradient.
- Describe how reservoir inflow, tubing outflow, wellhead pressure, separator pressure, injection pressure, and compression interact.
- Use nodal-analysis concepts to understand the operating point of a flowing or gas-lifted well.
- Identify the principal surface and downhole components of a gas-lift system and explain the function of each.
- Explain the construction and operation of injection-pressure-operated, production-pressure-operated, balanced, unbalanced, unloading, operating, orifice, throttling, and pilot-operated valves.
- Construct and interpret a gas-lift valve force balance.
- Explain how valve dome pressure, casing pressure, tubing pressure, port size, bellows area, and temperature affect valve operation.
- Describe the complete unloading sequence from the upper unloading valve to the intended operating valve or orifice.
- Perform a preliminary continuous-flow gas-lift design.
- Determine a feasible operating injection depth and target injection-gas rate.
- Understand valve-spacing, valve-setting, port-sizing, injection-pressure, and operating-stability considerations.
- Explain the principal differences among continuous-flow, intermittent, chamber, and plunger-assisted gas lift.
- Interpret casing pressure, tubing pressure, injection rate, production rate, pressure surveys, temperature surveys, and acoustic measurements.
- Diagnose common gas-lift problems using available well and operating data.
- Distinguish a downhole valve problem from a compressor, injection-network, flowline, separator, or other surface-facility problem.
- Evaluate whether additional injection gas is technically effective and economically justified.
- Explain why optimizing an individual well does not necessarily optimize the entire gas-lift field or injection network.
Fundamentals of Rod Pumping and Dynagraph Interpretation
1. Fundamentals of Sucker Rod Pumping: Basic review of mechanics, torque, pressure, pressure gradients, behavior of oil, gas and water, bubble point pressure, solution GOR and the relationships of these concepts to the dynagraph cards. Production potential (IPRs), tubulars and TACs, prime movers (motors and engines), pumping units (gearbox, structure, weights, stroke length, rotation), fiberglass and steel sucker rods, different API pump designs, pump operation as it relates to the different pump dynagraph cards.
2. Dynagraph Interpretation: derivation and explanation of data used by SAM rod pump controller, the utility of the surface dynagraph card, the evolution of the down hole card, the 4 corners of every pump card, understanding rod stretch, surface and pump card basics, buoyancy, buckling, and fluid load, the effects of different pump diameters, pump intake pressures, tubing head pressures, 12 basic downhole dynagraph cards:
full pump tubing movement
incomplete fillage gas interference
flowing well/inoperative pump/deep rod part pump tag downstroke and upstroke
bent barrel/sticking pump leaking traveling valve/pump slippage
leaking standing valve split barrel
viscous friction drag friction
Advanced dynagraph card analysis, rod parts-shallow, midway, and deep, comparison of all the flat line card conditions, stuffing box friction, rod tubing friction-uncorrected and corrected pump friction, paraffin with fiberglass and steel, incorrect rod string data – fiberglass instead of steel, steel instead of fiberglass, data reversed, incorrect rod modulus, leaking to fill pump, leakage vs. pumping speed, excessive leakage imitating pump fillage, tagging and its effect on the surface card, combating gas interference.
3. Fluid Level Analysis: full explanation of how the fluid level gun system works (Echometer), fluid level analysis and pump intake pressure calculations from fluid level, production potential from the fluid level gun software.
4. SAM RPC Training: Historical Data, Troubleshooting the SAM WM, Valve Check Routine, SAM well test, pump intake pressure using the SAM RPC, optimization of run times, gearbox loading using the SAM.
Design and Optimization of Vertical and Deviated Rod Pumped Wells with SROD/RODSTAR
1. This course begins with a step-by-step guide to understanding data input into the SROD and/or RODSTAR programs, along with the operation of included subprograms as applicable.
2. Example wells are built and the resulting reports that are generated by SROD and/or RODSTAR are discussed. In particular, the data that is input and computed for every single output on each report is fully explained, providing the student with an in-depth understanding of the how the programs operate. This is of fundamental importance to properly reading and interpreting the output results from the programs, as well as to developing the ability to discern when the program may not be properly modeling the system.
3. Different optimization methods are discussed using SROD and/or RODSTAR that can immediately be applied to existing rod pumped wells.
4. There is also discussion on how different wellbore and pumping unit system design parameters impact side and drag loads in deviated wells.