Workover Cost and the Economics of Stripper Wells
How much does a workover cost on a rod-pumped well?
There is no single number. A rod-failure workover costs rig and crew time, replacement rods, tubing or pump parts, trucking and disposal, plus the production lost while the well is down and waiting. What it costs your operation depends on depth, rig rates and how long wells wait for a rig. The useful number is your own average, multiplied by how often it happens. 2
A workover, in the glossary sense, is major maintenance or remedial work on a producing well, often pulling and replacing the production tubing with a workover rig on site. 2 On a rod-pumped well the most common reason to call a rig is a failure downhole: a parted rod, a tubing leak worn through by rods, or a worn-out pump. A short-course paper on failure frequency names rod parts and tubing wear among the leading causes of failure in sucker rod-pumped wells. 3
The cost has two parts:
- The job. Rig and crew time, rods, tubing, pump repair, inspection, trucking. This is the invoice.
- The downtime. Every day the well is down, it produces nothing. On a low-rate well this is easy to underestimate, because the daily number looks small next to the invoice.
The SRABS ROI calculator uses $45,000 as its default average workover cost. That is the calculator's starting assumption for a typical 100-well independent, not an industry benchmark: the slider runs from $15,000 to $150,000 because real costs vary that widely. Put in your own number.
Why stripper wells live or die on failure frequency
A low-rate well earns its money slowly and loses it in lumps. One workover can wipe out weeks or months of a stripper well's revenue, so how often the well fails matters more to its economics than almost anything else you can change. 1
Most US wells are low-rate. The EIA counted 918,481 producing oil and gas wells in 2024, down from a peak of 1,031,161 in 2014, and about 78% of them produced 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day or less in 2023 through 2024. 1 Many of them are rod-pumped: one short-course paper puts the number of rod-pumped wells in North America at over 600,000. 3 The same economics apply to rod-pumped strippers anywhere, from Appalachia and the Midcontinent to mature fields in Romania or Indonesia.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Take the calculator's default well, modelled at 14 bbl/d and $72 oil: about $1,008 a day in gross revenue, before royalties and operating costs. At the calculator's default $45,000 workover, a single failure costs roughly 45 days of that well's gross revenue, before counting the production lost while it waits for a rig.
A well that fails once every few years can carry that. A well that fails every few months can't. That's why, in many fields, the economics come down to a handful of problem wells.
Repeat failures: where the money goes
Workover spending is usually concentrated: a minority of wells account for most repeat failures and most of the cost. Finding and fixing those wells is the highest-return work on a mature field. 34
The failure-frequency paper puts it directly: "a minority of wells constitute the majority of repeat failures and workover cost in a field." 3 Another short-course case describes a well in Jim Wells County that needed a pump-replacement workover every 90 days on average, with sand and solids entering the barrel and plunger as a primary cause. 4
Repeat failures usually have a repeat cause. For rod-pumped wells the usual suspects are:
- Rod buckling at the bottom of the string, which wears tubing and parts rods. See the sucker rod buckling guide.
- Fluid pound on pumped-off wells, which shocks the pump, rods and surface unit. See the fluid pound guide.
- Gas, sand and solids at the pump.
Fixing a well's failure frequency is worth more than shaving the cost of each job. Halving the number of pulls on a problem well saves the whole job cost and the downtime each time.
Running the numbers: the default 100-well scenario
The SRABS ROI calculator's default scenario is a modelled 100-well independent fleet. At its defaults it shows 43 workovers avoided a year and $3.59M in net savings, with a 4.0-month payback. All of it is modelled; change the inputs to match your fleet.
The table shows the calculator's defaults and the arithmetic it uses, so you can check it or redo it with your own numbers.
| Input (calculator default) | Value | Output (modelled) | Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wells in fleet | 100 | Rod failures per year (100 × 0.62) | 62 | |
| Rod failures per well per year | 0.62 | Baseline workover spend (62 × $45k) | $2.79M / yr | |
| Average workover cost | $45,000 | Workovers avoided (62 × 70%) | 43 / yr | |
| Failures avoided by SRABS | 70% | Workover savings (43.4 × $45k) | $1.95M / yr | |
| Baseline production | 14 bbl/well/d | Production uplift revenue (35 wells × 14 bbl/d × 365 × 22% × $72) | $2.83M / yr | |
| Wells with uplift potential | 35% of fleet | SRABS subscription (100 × $12k) | $1.2M / yr | |
| Production uplift on those wells | 22% | Net savings | $3.59M / yr | |
| Oil price | $72/bbl | Payback | 4.0 months | |
| SRABS subscription | $12,000 per well per year |
Read this as a model, not a result. The 70% failure avoidance and the 22% uplift are the calculator's default assumptions for a typical fleet, not measured field outcomes. The calculator exists so you can replace every one of them with your own numbers; the most useful inputs to get right are your failure rate per well and your real average workover cost.
How to cut workover cost on a mature field
Start with the wells that fail most, find the repeat cause, and fix it at the source. Then measure the change in failures per well per year, the one number that drives the economics. 3
- Rank wells by failure frequency. Pull records for the last few years and list wells by pulls per year. The top of the list is where the money is.
- Find the repeat cause. Pull reports, wear patterns and dynamometer cards usually point to one: buckling, fluid pound, gas, sand.
- Fix the cause, not the symptom. Replacing the same rods and tubing on the same well buys time. Changing the conditions that broke them is what changes the failure rate: tension in the string, pump rate matched to inflow, gas and solids handled at the intake.
- Measure. Track failures per well per year before and after, on the same wells.
The bottom line
On a mature field, workover cost is a frequency problem. The invoice per job matters, but how often the same wells fail matters more, and on a stripper well one pull can take months of revenue. Know your own failure rate and average job cost, find the repeat cause on the worst wells, and fix it at the source.
Run your own numbers on the ROI calculator, then test the fix on one well.
FAQ
How much does a workover cost on a rod-pumped well?
It varies with depth, rig rates, parts and downtime, so there's no single figure. Use your own average. The SRABS ROI calculator starts from a $45,000 default assumption and lets you set anything from $15,000 to $150,000.
What is a stripper well?
A low-rate well near the limit of economic production. Thresholds vary by regulator and tax code. For scale, the EIA reports that about 78% of US producing wells made 15 barrels of oil equivalent a day or less in 2023 through 2024.
Why are workovers so expensive for low-rate wells?
A low-rate well earns a small amount each day, so a single workover can equal weeks or months of its revenue, before counting production lost while it waits for a rig.
What causes most workovers on rod-pumped wells?
Downhole failures: rod parts, tubing worn through by rods, and pump failures. Rod parts and tubing wear are among the leading causes, and a minority of wells usually accounts for most repeat failures.
How do you reduce workover frequency?
Rank wells by failures per year, find the repeat cause on the worst ones, and fix it at the source instead of replacing the same parts.
How is the SRABS ROI calculated?
The calculator multiplies your fleet size, failure rate and workover cost to get workover spend, applies an avoided-failure percentage and a production uplift, and subtracts the subscription. All defaults are modelled assumptions; replace them with your own.
Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, "U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Wells by Production Rate" (released December 8, 2025). https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/wells/
- SLB Energy Glossary, "workover." https://glossary.slb.com/en/terms/w/workover
- Rogers, J., Ward, S., "A Web-Based Failure Frequency Diagnosis and Reduction System, Featuring Imaging of Rod-Pumped Producing Wells," Southwestern Petroleum Short Course. https://www.swpshortcourse.org/paper/web-based-failure-frequency-diagnosis-and-reduction-system-featuring-imaging-rod-pumped
- Carson, R., Hudson, K., Narasimhan, R., "Specialty Rod Pump Reduces Workover Frequency and Associated OPEX Costs in Austin Chalk Well," Southwestern Petroleum Short Course, paper 2024041. https://www.swpshortcourse.org/paper/2024041-specialty-rod-pump-reduces-workover-frequency-and-associated-opex-costs-austin-chalk