How to read your pump tickets like a reservoir engineer.

Most independent operators read the bottom of the pump ticket, note the oil number, and file it. That’s a missed opportunity. The same ticket has the diagnostic information you need to catch a declining well early, and to tell whether a treatment or workover did anything when you spent the money. Here’s the simple version of how reservoir engineers read the same data.

The three numbers that matter

Forget the dozens of fields a pump ticket can have. The three that tell the story are:

1. Total fluid per day. Oil plus water, in barrels. This is the volume your pump and your formation are moving together.
2. Oil cut. Percentage of the fluid that is oil. (Some tickets list water cut instead. They tell you the same thing inverted.)
3. Days on / days off. How many days the pump actually ran in the reporting period. Important because a low oil number can mean low production or just downtime.

That’s it. Plot those three monthly for the last 24 months and you have a diagnostic chart.

What each pattern means

Total fluid steady, oil cut falling

Your pump is moving the same volume but more of it is water. Saltwater is finding a dominant flow path through the formation, or your rock has shifted to oil-wet. Either way the well is restricted, not depleted. The fix is in the formation, not the wellbore.

Total fluid falling, oil cut steady

Less fluid is making it into the wellbore overall. Likely candidates: plugged perforations, pump efficiency loss, or the tubing has a partial obstruction. Oil ratio is unchanged because the constriction is upstream of where oil and water separate.

Total fluid falling, oil cut also falling

Both restrictions are happening at once. Common on older wells. You’re losing total flow and what does come up is wateriest of all. Diagnose carefully because the right fix probably tackles both causes.

Total fluid stable for years, sudden drop one month

Look for a mechanical event. Rod failure, pump issue, sand influx, paraffin plug in the tubing. This usually isn’t a reservoir story. It’s a maintenance one.

Why this matters before paying for any treatment

Service companies sell their treatment. Acid companies sell acid. Surfactant companies sell surfactant. Workover crews sell rig time. The match between the symptom on your well and the treatment they want to sell you is your job to verify, because they don’t lose money if it’s wrong.

If your pattern is steady total fluid with falling oil cut, acid won’t do much. The restriction is in the rock, not in the perforations. Pumping acid down a well that has a wettability problem mostly produces an expensive science experiment.

If your pattern is total fluid down with oil cut steady, a workover that pulls rods and inspects the pump might solve it for the cost of a half day of rig time, no formation treatment required.

Why this matters after a treatment

Whatever you spend money on, baseline the well first. Three consecutive months of clean tickets before treatment, three consecutive months after. Anything less and the noise in your data swamps the signal you’re trying to measure.

On every Boost job we measure baseline flow on site, treat the well, and measure post-treatment flow before we leave. The numbers go on a printed sheet you can match against your own pump tickets the following month. More on what we do on site.

The 30-minute monthly habit

Pull the ticket. Add three numbers to a row in a spreadsheet. Update the chart. Look at the three lines. Spend two minutes asking which of the patterns above your well is on.

That’s the habit. Done over a year, it gives you the same picture an engineer paid by the hour would draw.