Profit calculators
Stripper and Marginal Well Profitability Calculator
Lower lifting costs, more years of profit: see what it means for your own well. This free calculator is for stripper and marginal oil wells. Enter your well’s production, oil price, lifting costs (LOE) and treatment terms to see monthly profit, break-even, 7-year net profit and profitable life with and without microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR).
Run your own well: monthly profit, payback and profitable life
Starts from the stripper-well proforma example on the Marginal Wells page: 1.5 BOPD, $1,200 a month in lifting costs (LOE), a 20% LOE reduction, a $300 monthly maintenance treatment and 20% more oil. Enter your own production, oil price, lifting cost and treatment terms, plus the oil your lease now sends to disposal, and every figure updates as you type.
Send these numbers to HiltekOpens an email with your inputs filled in, so we can talk about a Production Pilot.
1 Monthly profit and loss, one well
| Per well, per month | Before | With MEOR | Change |
|---|
2 Where the extra profit comes from, one well per month
3 Net profit per year over 20 years, 1 well
4 Net profit ($ per year), 7 years, one well
5 7-year detail, all treated wells
Production falls each year by each case’s annual decline; lifting costs, treatment included, rise by the LOE escalation from year 2; oil price is held flat.
6 7-year totals, all treated wells
| 7 years | Without | With MEOR | Change |
|---|
Assumptions and how to read the results
- Order of the LOE math
- The LOE reduction is taken off today’s lifting costs first, then the monthly MEOR treatment is added back: revised LOE = current LOE × (1 − % reduction) + treatment. The reduction is the savings from fewer hot-oil jobs, cleanouts, chemical treatments, pump pulls and downtime; it does not include the treatment itself.
- The treatment cost is the maintenance phase
- The program starts with a 2 to 4 month remediation phase that cleans up the wellbore and establishes the microbial colony, then moves to monthly maintenance. The monthly cost entered here is the maintenance-phase cost. Fluid volumes in marginal wells are small, so once the colony is established it can be sustained with smaller ongoing treatment amounts. Remediation-phase treatments are priced per well in the pilot proposal and are not included in these figures.
- The production increase is a one-time step
- The % increase is applied once, in year 1, and is sustained. It does not compound. From then on the treated well declines at the slower MEOR rate (0.5% a year in the example, against 4% untreated), so the gap between the two cases widens every year.
- What “profitable life” means
- The number of years until annual net profit turns negative as production declines and costs escalate, counted up to 40 years. Oil price is held flat, and royalty and severance tax are taken on gross revenue.
- Break-even
- Break-even production = monthly lifting costs ÷ (oil price × (1 − royalty − severance tax) × 30 days). Break-even oil price is the same calculation solved for price. Lifting cost per barrel = monthly lifting costs ÷ barrels sold.
- Oil carried into disposal water
- Oil lost a day = disposal water × water density × oil concentration (ppm) ÷ 1,000,000 ÷ oil density, with water at 350.15 lb/bbl × (1 + (60 − °F) × 0.00005) and oil at 350.15 lb/bbl × 141.5 ÷ (°API + 131.5) for a typical 32 °API crude, as in Hiltek’s oil carry-over loss calculator: 500 bbl of water a day at 750 ppm, 45 °F and 32 °API carries about 13.0 bbl of oil a month, $911 at $70 oil. The reduction keeps that share of the oil in the sales tank, sold at the oil price less royalty and severance tax, and it lowers the MEOR case’s break-even and lifting cost per barrel. It is a lease total, shared evenly by the wells and held flat over the years. The example starts at 0% so the results match the proforma; enter the reduction you expect, or measure it with oil-in-water tests in a pilot.
What makes up monthly LOE
- Electricity and fuel: powering the beam and rod-pump motors
- Field labor and pumper: daily or weekly gauge checks and basic upkeep
- Water handling: disposal and hauling of produced salt water
- Chemical treatment: continuous or batch dosing for paraffin and scale
- Regulatory compliance: annual pressure testing, integrity logs and filing fees
- Lease maintenance: site access upkeep, road grading and clearing
Expensive periodic events MEOR helps avoid
| Downhole event | Estimated cost | Typical downtime |
|---|---|---|
| Paraffin or scale cleanout | $1,000–$3,000 | 1–3 days |
| Snapped sucker rod | $1,500–$4,000 | 2–5 days |
| Stuck or worn pump pull | $2,000–$5,000 | 4–7 days |
| Tubing split or joint leak | $4,000–$7,500+ | 7–14+ days |
Typical ranges from Hiltek Resource Recovery; actual figures vary by well. Fewer of these events is a large part of the LOE reduction.
Method from Hiltek’s simplified stripper-well proforma (October 2026): 30-day months; royalty and severance tax on gross revenue; the production increase applies once and does not compound; the LOE reduction applies to current LOE and the maintenance treatment is added after it; production declines and LOE escalates from year 2; oil price held flat; oil kept out of disposal water from Hiltek’s oil carry-over loss calculator. Illustrative estimates, not a forecast for any specific well. A pilot on 3 to 10 wells feeding a common battery measures the real production increase and LOE reduction.
Sources for this section
- Hiltek Resource Recovery, simplified stripper-well proforma (October 2026): method and example values of this calculator
- Hiltek Resource Recovery, oil carry-over loss calculator (November 2026): oil lost in disposal water