American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2015 - 102

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ago, electric submersible pumps have
been an effective means for moving large
fluid volumes, but they have been susceptible to high gas content, abrasives
and volume changes. GE's Ollre reviewed
changes being made to make ESPs more
reliable in unconventional formations,
with their high and variable gas content
and rapid decline rates.
One advancement, he mentioned, is
mixed flow stages, which inject an axial
moment to the fluid while retaining the
radial component of the rotating impeller.
This enables an ESP to handle higher
gas content while imparting less velocity
to solids, and "is a better application for
handling gas and/or abrasives," he said.
Another improvement, he continued,
is to employ gas separators that use rotational force to separate gas and liquids
before they enter the pump, similar to a
centrifuge.
In the past 25 years, Ollre said, stage
bearings have transitioned from primarily
rubber and softer metals to much harder,
more abrasive-resistant ceramic materials
such as tungsten carbide and silicon carbide.
He said modular pump designs accommodated the higher thrust load of
mixed flow stages while providing radial
support to the shaft to prevent instability.
In addition, expanded thrust-load capacity
enables deeper depth setting applications,
he noted.
To handle rapid decline rates, Ollre
said GE introduced its TD 1000 lowflow, mixed stage ESP about a year ago,
available in floater, compression and
modular configurations, with operating
ranges anywhere from 700-1,300 barrels
a day to 300-1,750 bbl/d. He said GE's
Q+ pump design incorporated downthrust
as well as upthrust load in each module
with tungsten carbide bearings. "During
initial production, the ESP is protected
mechanically from being damaged by
the high flow rate," Ollre observed. "Then

a conventional power source, or could
utilize stranded gas reserves.

Advancements in design and components are increasing the capability of
electric submersible pumps to handle
abrasives and volume changes, thereby
making them a viable solution for pumping unconventional wells, Albert "Chip"
Ollre, president of GE Oil & Gas ESP
Inc., tells OIPA.

as the well's production tapers off, we
are protected mechanically from low flow
rate."
Turning to other oil field technology,
Ollre mentioned that GE was working
on a permanent-magnet motor that no
longer would require using some of the
electrical field to induce magnetism to
the rotor. This not only lowers electricity
costs, Ollre said, but increases power
density. He said the initial field trial generated 100 horsepower in a 12-foot-long
tool-compared with a traditional tool that
required 59 feet to deliver 104 hp-which
he noted was helpful for applications
where it was desirable to seat the motor
in a well's lateral section.
Finally, he said, GE is working on a
modular power generator that consists
basically of a Waukesha engine configured
to run on field gas, which he said could
enable production at facilities that lacked

OIPA President Mike Terry
(left) visits with Oklahoma
Tax Commission Executive Director Tony Mastin,
prior to Mastin's presentation on the final day of
OIPA's fall conference,
Oct. 18-20 at the Big
Cedar Lodge south of
Branson, Mo.

102 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Private Equity
The venture capital industry has nearly
$4 trillion in assets under management
and another $1 trillion available for investment, First Reserve's Michael France
advised OIPA. Of more interest to his
fall conference audience, he said $230
billion of that was focused on the energy
industry, of which he characterized $35
billion as "dry powder, looking for investment opportunities in the oil and gas
space."
Looking at it another way, he said,
"Private equity firms have invested $380
billion in the energy sector since 2006.
The upstream is about a third of that."
France described private equity as
"controlled investments" for the long
term. "These are three-, five-, seven-year
investments," he said. "It really is partnering with a team to build a business
over a long time frame."
He said private equity might partner
with a management team with the requisite
expertise to build a company through a
series of acquisitions. More common in
today's oil and gas environment, he added,
are drilling joint ventures with companies
that have a lot of resource potential, but
lack capital. "Private equity is spending
a lot of time providing drilling dollars to
producers to develop a large resource
they have, but maybe are liquidity short,"
he affirmed.
Finally, France said, private equity
may make what he called a straight management commitment. "There may not
be any assets, and we are just (enabling)
a team to build a portfolio with a commitment behind it," he outlined.
Electronic Tax Filing
The Oklahoma Tax Commission began
working toward an integrated tax system
shortly after reorganizing in 1996, Executive Director Tony Mastin advised OIPA.
But it wasn't until he became executive
director in 2007 that the OTC began to
seriously consider purchasing an off-theshelf system. However, he said oil and
gas industry representatives became concerned that a one-size-fits-all package
would not work well for companies operating in multiple states with diverse oil
and gas tax regimes.
"That is when we decided we really
needed an electronic filing system that
was easier for you to report and easier
for us to process," Mastin recalled, saying
that is the system the OTC placed online
in June for operators to file both their
320-A, new well registration forms, and
320-C, change of ownership forms.
American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2015

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