The main reason pumps fail in high-sand wells is the wearing of the plunger and the barrel.
“The biggest problem that happens when you have a sandy rod-pumped well is the sand just literally wears away the parts of the pump,” says Karl Sakocius, senior marketing manager for production systems at Weatherford. “When it does that, the pump becomes more and more inefficient and ultimately fails, and that means the pump has to be pulled.”
