Local invention solves long time Stripper well issue

Local entrepreneur Pete Woods of Chester was looking for a way to save some time on the number of trips he had to make to service his stripper wells near the Sweetgrass Hills.   It's about a 40-mile trip from his home in Chester and he told KSEN that he rarely went to sleep at night not thinking that he should have checked the "stuffing box," which is the most used piece of equiptment currently being used for the same purpose.

Woods polish rod seal has several advantages over the current seal.  A set of grooves inside the main casing creates a grease reservoir and keeps rubber seals lubricated where a typical stuffing box lubricates the rubber to the point that the grease runs out, causing rubber to dry out and heat up while rubbing against steel.   That builds heat, burns out the rubber and up comes the oil from inside the well.

We talked with three different representatives who all have stripper wells here in the Golden Triangle.  Kurt Taule with Balco Oil, MCR and Bo Woods and all say the newly created "Polish Rod Seal," has been very effective with little maintenance and no mishaps.    The oil producers have used the seal anywhere from 3 months up to 3 years, so it's not known just how long an average seal would last.

The real headache occurs, if your typical stuffing box breaks down, is the oil that spills out on the ground and the expensive and time-consuming cleanup that ensues.    Woods has created the new seal in his small shop below the Sugar Shack building in Chester.  It's been a 3-year process and after all the refining he began to attempt to get a U-S patent on the piece.   That too has been an exhaustive process in terms of dollars that have to be paid up front for officials to even look at the idea and Attorneys to represent it to the patent researchers.

Woods is hoping that showing some proof of market value, the idea that you can't buy anything similar anywhere and his polish rod will solve a longstanding problem in the oilfield, will convince examiners to take a further look.

Our photos show an obviously cleaner and simpler mechanism than the piece that has been used to this point.