The United States has more oil and gas wells than any other country. As of December 31, 2004, there were more than half a million producing oil wells in the United States. That is more than three times the combined total for the next three leaders: China, Canada, and Russia. With nearly as many producing natural gas wells, the United States is the worldwide leader in that category as well. However, most of these wells produce relatively small volumes of oil and gas, often on an intermittent and marginally economic basis. Wells that produce 10 barrels of oil or less per day, or 60 thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of natural gas or less are commonly called “stripper” wells. The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), which reports the annual status of U.S. stripper wells, recorded 394,016 stripper oil wells producing an average of 1.9 barrels of oil per day, and 326,750 stripper natural gas wells producing an average of 19.3 Mcf per day, as of January 1, 2010.
The number of producing stripper wells changes depending on how many wells enter the ranks (by declining in production) and leave the ranks (by increasing production or being plugged and abandoned) each year. The United States’ stripper oil well population has been gradually declining over the past decade. Although a net of about 8,000 aging oil wells drop to stripper status each year, roughly another 14,000 are plugged and abandoned, leaving a net reduction in the oil well total of about 6,000 wells per year. At the same time, a net of nearly 14,000 gas wells per year, on average, have dropped to stripper well status over the past decade (about 17,000 per year during 2000 – 2003). Roughly 3,000 – 4,000 stripper gas wells are plugged and abandoned in the United States each year on average, resulting in an average net increase in the stripper gas well population over the past decade of about 10,000 wells per year.
The SWC is a partnership that includes domestic oil and gas producers, service and supply companies, trade associations, academia, the Department of Energy’s Strategic Center for Natural Gas and Oil (SCNGO) at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Leadership and active industrial participation are essential to making the SWC a success. The SWC has a constitution and bylaws, and each SWC member appoints one representative to a Technical Advisory Committee. The Technical Advisory Committee is responsible for steering the technical direction of the consortium and for electing a seven-member Executive Council. The Executive Council is responsible for selecting from solicited proposals, the research projects to be funded.
Research is conducted in three broad areas identified as key challenges to stripper well productivity: reservoir remediation, wellbore clean-up, and surface system optimization. Research outside of these three areas may be considered pending approval of the program sponsors. Specific research projects are developed by the membership using a standardized proposal template. Proposal submission is limited to full members of the consortium and collaboration among full members is encouraged. Projects are funded on an annual basis. Project participants must contribute at least 30 percent of the cost of each project in the form of cash or in-kind support.
Of the current total of 65 members, more than 80 percent are companies within the domestic industry, split roughly between producers and service/supply companies.
Each year, the SWC holds two open technology transfer workshops where the results of the research are presented to the industry. The SWC also publishes a newsletter on its website and highlights specific projects in other DOE publications. A complete listing and abstracts for all of the funded projects, as well as other SWC information, are available online at http://www.energy.psu.edu [external site].