Aug. 2, 2018
A 1971 mechanical engineering graduate has been named a “Legend of Artificial Lift” and will be honored by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) during the 2018 SPE Artificial Lift Conference in August in The Woodlands, Texas.
Ken Decker (BS MECH EGR ’71) is considered an expert in the use of gas lift valve performance, design, and troubleshooting.
The 2018 SPE Artificial Lift Conference and Exhibition on Aug. 28-30 will feature a special “Legends of Artificial Lift” luncheon honoring five people who have made outstanding contributions to the field of artificial lift technology. The 2018 recipients are Ken Decker, Cleon Dunham, Bill Lane, Tony Podio, and Lyle Wilson.
Courtesy of The Journal of Petroleum & Technology --
Ken Decker has practiced gas lift for more than 30 years and is considered an expert in the use of gas lift valve performance, design, and troubleshooting. He has served on numerous API and ISO committees writing standards for gas lift equipment design and testing, and he has written numerous SPE papers on gas lift valve performance. After earning his BS degree in 1971 from Michigan State University, he worked on gas lift projects around the world, first with Teledyne Merla, then Otis Engineering. Upon his retirement from Otis in 1993, Decker formed his consulting business, Decker Technology.
In 1997, he founded the Valve Performance Clearinghouse (VPC) consortium and served as administrator until 2014, when he handed over administration to Louisiana State University. During his tenure at the consortium, he personally tested and developed custom correlations for 59 different commercially available gas lift valves and 216 valve-port size combinations. These VPC correlations were distributed to all VPC members and have now been incorporated into WinGLUE, SNAP, PROSPER, WellFlo, PipeSim, and OLGA, as well as into member companies’ inhouse software.
While Herald Winkler pioneered the concept of gas lift valve testing, Decker took it mainstream and integrated the use of valve performance in gas lift design and trouble shooting. His company, Decker Technology, manufactures an Automatic Valve Testing tool that verifies the quality of valves before sending them to the field. His company also developed the Dynalift gas lift simulator that is currently marketed by Weatherford.
“Gas lift has been practiced as an art since its first use,” Decker said, “and I attempted to push the boundaries into the realm of science. The goal has not yet been met, but if you really want to know what happens in gas lift, understanding the real behavior of gas lift valves is the first step.
“There are now several established methods of artificial lift, each with its own history, body of knowledge, and practices,” he said. “Some would suggest that artificial lift is at its zenith, but it only appears that way when looking at the methods from the perspective of current technology. There is ample opportunity to explore and improve how each of those methods is practiced. The next generation of artificial lift engineers will have much better tools and have different understandings of how their knowledge interacts with the science of artificial lift. It is that new ‘vision’ that has the potential of driving artificial lift to its zenith.”
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