PEGN 315 — Texas, led by Dr. Xiaolong Yin
The 2019 Summer Field Session started on May 13th of 2019. This year, our group headed to Midland, Texas, the center of the Permian Basin, the current top oil produc- er in the US, and perhaps also in the world. Permian Basin currently has a rig count of 450, and a daily oil production in excess of 4 million barrels per day. Visiting Permian Basin is really a trip that goes into the cen- ter of action.
Our group has 32 students, three graduate
teaching assistants (Yakup Coskuner, Deep
Joshi, Kanat Karatayev), and three faculty/
staff (Xiaolong Yin, Yilin Fan, Rachel Mc- Donald). In five days, we visited a number
The whole group at Don-Nan.
of companies from service providers to op-
erators. It was a wonderful experience both for the students and for the group leads: five of the six group
leads were also first timers in the field session. We want to use this opportunity to thank all companies
who warmly hosted us – Don-Nan, Calfrac, UpCurve, Sivalls, NOV, Occidental – and thank all friends and
alumni who greeted and guided us and made the trip memorable!
On our first day, we drove from Lubbock, the city where we landed, to Midland. The trip took about three hours. After checking into the hotel and having lunch, we visited the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum . This museum presents in significant detail the geology and history of Permian Basin oilfield, and has a wonderful collection of tools and demos for students to learn the process of field development and how equipment works.
On the second day, we visited Don-Nan , a company specialized in making parts for rod pumps and gas lift. Behind an almost inconspicuous gate along Highway 158, Don-Nan runs an impressively large yard that provides parts and services to rod pumps and gas lift not only in the Permian Basin but also across country. Our host, Josh Carty, organized a thorough tour of the facility, which included two mini-lectures on rod pumps and gas lift.
Getting our safety instructions at the Calfrac site.
In the morning of Day Three, we greeted PE alum Tom
Migchelbrink from Calfrac . Tom and a number of
other alums (Anjali Jha, Bryan Kang, Bob Sharp-
less, Matt Sinkey, AJ Ambrose) organized a trip
for us to a fracturing site near Pecos oper-
ated by UpCurve . There, we greeted Drew
Reed, Calfrac’s manager in Artesia , and
Dena Dembowski, UpCurves manager
on-site. They gave us tour of the site
and explained fracturing opera-
tions in details to the students.
In the afternoon, we spent an
hour with Sivalls , a compa-
ny in Odessa that specializes
in making pressure surface
equipment, such as those used
in separations and dehydrations.
In the evening, we attended the
welcome event organized by Antho-
ny Bordonaro of the local M-club, with
the help from Justin Moos (PE alum) from
Nine Energy Services and Molly Beyer from
the Mines Foundation. The two-hour party
brought enthusiastic conversations, and was
definitely a highlight and a very memorable part
of this Midland trip.
24 COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES