The math on a stripper well lease
In a mature basin of stripper wells and long-lived waterfloods — like the Illinois Basin, where we're based and the typical well averages around a barrel and a half a day — a lease can stay economic for decades if it's watched closely. On low-volume producers, the margin for error is thin: a stuck pump that goes unnoticed for a week, a full tank the hauler missed, or a saltwater leak can erase a month of a lease's income.
Day to day, that production runs on pumpers. A typical route strings together leases across two or three counties — gauging tanks, checking tubing and casing pressures, listening to pumping units, switching tanks ahead of a haul. Most operators still manage it the way their fathers did — a gauge book, a route sheet, and a lot of windshield time.
What an hourly reading changes
LeaseSight's LTE sensors report tank level, tubing and casing pressure, and flow every hour, and push an alert to your phone the moment a threshold is crossed. A tank that quits gaining tells you a well is down before your pumper's next visit. A tank approaching top tells you to call the hauler before you're shut in waiting on a truck. Tubing pressure that falls off overnight points to a hole or a parted rod string while it's still a cheap fix.
That changes how a route works. Instead of driving every lease every day to find out what happened, your pumper starts the morning knowing which batteries gained, which wells look off, and which tanks need a load called — and spends the day on the leases that actually need hands on them.
Alerts that are worth stopping for
When your phone goes off, it should be worth stopping for. Every tank carries four thresholds — low, critical low, high, critical high — and every pressure gauge has its own alert levels, so you set the lines that matter on each well. A flow meter reading zeros raises a no-flow alert once it's been at zero as long as you set, because every well is different. And the alert carries the trend, not just the number: "12 in from top (was 16 an hour ago)."
Device health is on by default too: battery, signal, and last check-in on every sensor, with low-battery and missed-check-in alerts — a dead sensor never just goes quiet.
Hardware that fits a stripper well lease
The sensors are designed to hook up and go — a few minutes per unit, no wiring, no technician. Tank monitors screw into a 2- or 3-inch fitting on top of the tank, pressure sensors go where you need them, flow meters in line, and the gateway up to 75 feet away. Each sensor runs on two standard AA batteries — a set lasts 6+ months (actual life varies with temperature and reporting frequency) — and the gateway runs off solar and reports over LTE, so there's no power to run out to it.
Coverage is the one thing we check first: the gateway needs a workable signal, not a strong one, and we check it with you before we quote anything. Professional installation is available at an hourly rate in the Illinois Basin if you'd rather have it done.
Start with the app that's already in your pocket
You can download LeaseSight and put it to work today as a manual gauging app — add your wells and tanks, hand-gauge in feet, inches, and quarters, and keep run and draw tickets and pressure logs in one place. It's one identical app on phone and desktop, built mobile-first for one-bar cell service, so it works from the truck on location as well as it does from the office. The live sensor readings switch on once the hardware is set up.
What it costs
Hardware up front, then a monthly subscription per sensor — most operators install the sensors themselves, and professional installation is available in the Illinois Basin if you'd rather have it done. We don't publish numbers because every lease is different — tank counts, pressure gauges, coverage. Call or send us a message and we'll walk your lease list and quote it straight.
Built by operators in the Illinois Basin
LeaseSight was built in the Illinois Basin — we're based here, and the first leases we ever served were the ones down the road in southern Illinois, southwestern Indiana, and western Kentucky. We use LeaseSight on our own wells every day. Today we serve operators anywhere in the US, and support works the same wherever you are — when you call, it's someone who knows what downtime costs, and what it costs to clean up a spill.