Industry Insight
Teams are asked to cut costs, secure materials faster, and keep the supply chain moving, all while managing the fallout from rod failures and unexpected workovers. But in their bid to do more with less, procurement teams often find out all too soon that the cheapest rod on paper is rarely the cheapest in practice.
You can buy the cheapest rods on the list, but if you’re pulling them out of the hole every few months, you’re paying for them twice. That’s why the real cost of a rod is more than face value; it’s purchase price + workover frequency + lost production. After all, even one workover a year running $30,000 to $125,000 each means that a “cheap” rod that fails twice as often isn’t a bargain.
MPACT changes that math. By extending rod life and cutting down on failures, wells equipped with MPACT-treated rods can often run 2x or 3x more than conventional rods. That’s not just fewer interventions, but a more stable cost structure and a predictable operational rhythm that procurement teams can plan around.
The fatigue problem doesn’t come down to steel grades alone, but how the rod performs under stress. In deeper, more deviated wells, rods are subjected to constant bending and side-loading that accelerate fatigue cracks. Traditional rods simply weren’t built for that environment. But the MPACT process uses isotropic shot peening, a tightly controlled surface treatment that creates a uniform layer of compressive stress across the rod. That layer delays the onset of fatigue cracking, extending the service life in lab testing by roughly 64% and allowing the rod to handle 25% greater alternating stress before failure.
Longer life at higher stress changes everything. You can run lighter strings and smaller pumping units without gambling on reliability. A lighter string means less steel, lower freight, and reduced horsepower on every stroke. Over time, the savings stack up quietly—lower energy use, fewer interventions, smaller units doing the same job.
Real wells prove it. In corrosion-prone environments, MPACT KD rods have replaced high-strength rods while improving run time and resisting corrosion fatigue. In non-corrosive settings, MPACT D rods have matched the performance of high-strength materials at a lower cost.
Beyond cost, the other big headache for procurement is unpredictability. Inventory shortages, variable quality, and lead times that shift every month keep budgets guessing. TRC built the MPACT Reliability Program to eliminate that chaos.
Every rod being considered for remanufacturing must first go through a 34-point inspection—far more detailed than the industry norm. The ones that pass undergo the MPACT process and are put right back into service. The remanufacturing process restores the rod’s operational capacity to better-than-new condition and upgrades it to MPACT standards. Once a rod enters the MPACT cycle, it carries with it a lifetime warranty, whether it came in brand-new or pulled from the field.
It’s a closed loop that keeps rods moving and quality consistent. This creates a self-sustaining inventory model that minimizes downtime and supply uncertainty, so procurement gains:
You know exactly what’s coming, when, and how it’ll perform. That stability reduces the peaks and valleys in both spending and delivery schedules, a long-term efficiency that rarely shows up in a bid comparison but pays off across the field.
Fewer workovers. Smaller units. Lighter strings. Stable supply. Add it all up, and it’s the kind of reliability that procurement teams get remembered for. With MPACT, procurement shifts from chasing quotes to managing lifecycle performance. You’re not paying for rods; you’re paying for uptime.
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