Pipeline News February 2011 by Pipeline News

PIPELINE NEWS Saskatchewan’s Petroleum Monthly

February 2011

Canada Post Publication No. 40069240

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Volume 3 Issue 9

Dust Up Over CO2

Page A3

Trican Boosts HP er? are a C ges or Pa g f out 0 kin eck 6-C3 Loo Ch C2

Pages B1

Slaying The Dragons Page C1

Working on the Áoor of Aaron Well Servicing’s new Rig 4, Travis Roberts, left, runs tongs while Troy Munson grabs a cleaning rag. Rig 4 went to work in mid-December, joining a Saskatchewan service rig Áeet that has been running hard. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

News

Notes

Housing crunch puts crimp on oilpatch

Sask drilling rigs hit 86% utilization Saskatchewan’s drilling rig fleet has been on a tear in January. It kicked off the New Year with roughly 20 rigs more rigs active than the same point in 2010, and double the level of 2009. That 20 rig increase carried on for the first half of January. Within a week following New Year’s, Saskatchewan had 85 rigs working, according to Nickle’s Rig Locator (www.riglocator.ca). By Jan. 18, that number had climbed to 94. With a decrease in the total number of rigs in the Saskatchewan fleet, it meant that 86 per cent of Saskatchewan rigs were working on that day. Across the border in Manitoba, rig utilization peaked at 100 per cent on Jan. 17, before dropping by one rig, with 17 of 18 rigs working the following day. Alberta saw 457, or 80 per cent, of its 569 drilling rigs active on Jan. 18. British Columbia was the laggard on a percentage basis, at 73 per cent utilization. Of 96 rigs, 70 were working. Fleet-wide in Western Canada, utilization hit 81 per cent. Those numbers might be higher, except for a shortage of experienced staff, according to officials with Ensign Big Sky Drilling in Oxbow, who has been running flat out.

Crescent Point sells Painted Pony shares Crescent Point Energy Corp. has ﬁled an early warning report with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities conﬁrming that it has disposed of all of its interest in 5.86 million class A shares of Painted Pony Petroleum Ltd., representing 11.5per cent of the issued and outstanding class A shares of Painted Pony. Upon such disposition, Crescent Point does not hold any securities in the capital of Painted Pony. Briefs courtesy Nickle’s Daily Oil Bulletin

This apartment complex under construction in Estevan is not nearly enough to deal with the inÁux of people into the community. The population has surged, driven by growth of the oilpatch. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

By Brian Zinchuk Pipeline News Estevan – A recent survey has conﬁrmed anecdotal accounts of a severe housing shortage in Estevan, one that’s having a substantial impact on the business community. The Saskatchewan South East Enterprise Region (SSEER) housing initiative has just completed a survey of Estevan businesses in conjunction with the Estevan and District Board of Tourism, Trade & Commerce. The survey is just one part of a broader regional housing initiative undertaken by SSEER. “The results are quite dramatic,” according to Edie Spagrud, CEO of SSEER. “While it was certainly well known that the housing shortage is hurting a lot of area businesses, Estevan survey results show the extent of that shortage is even more serious than we expected.” Estevan & District Board of Tourism, Trade and Commerce recently distributed the survey to its members and had a return rate of about 25 per cent. The participating employers represented 1,600 jobs in Estevan. Over 70 per cent of the businesses increased employment in the past year and 60 per cent plan to add even more jobs in 2011. One in ﬁve businesses has found it necessary to invest in housing to accommo-

date employees. “That is pretty serious when you consider that these employers are not in the real estate business,” said Spagrud. “But, unfortunately, that has become a business necessity for many.” SSEER reported that half the businesses surveyed have lost out on potential new employees when they discovered there was nowhere to live for them and their families. “That scenario has become all too common. The unprecedented number of job vacancies in this area will continue if there is nowhere to live” said Michel Cyrenne, manager of Estevan and District Board of Tourism, Trade and Commerce. Pipeline News found similar concerns while speaking to numerous oilfield businesses in the southeast region and particularly Estevan during early January. In an unbroken string of 12 interviews, all responded that their No. 1 priority was housing. Several noted they had applicants, but prospective employees could not take the job because they could not find somewhere affordable to live. Those businesses included two drilling companies, two service rig companies, two supply stores, a frac company, a cement outfit, a fibreglass pipeline supplier, a rod supplier, a frac sand facility and a manufacturer. ɸ Page A6

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

News

Notes Service rigs in demand

Utilization of Saskatchewan’s service rig ﬂeet hit 81 per cent by Jan. 18, with 149 of 184 rigs working. British Columbia also had 81 per cent utilization of its 37 rigs. Manitoba saw 15 of its 18 service rigs active, for a utilization of 83 per cent. Alberta’s 444 active rigs accounted for 68 per cent of their ﬂeet of 650. This is the carbon dioxide injection pipeline system near the Cenovus Goodwater plant. It contains a small percentage of H2S. File photo

Goodwater farmers take Cenovus to task By Brian Zinchuk Goodwater, Regina – A retired farmer and his nurse wife have caused a major stir in the world of carbon dioxide capture and storage. If their allegations are proven, it could have global implications as the world tries to find strategies to deal with greenhouse gases. Cameron and Jane Kerr, whose home quarter is 3.2 kilometres northwest of the hamlet of Goodwater, and in the middle of the Cenovus Weyburn unit, believe carbon dioxide injected underground for the purposes of enhanced oil recovery is coming up to the surface at their farm. Frustrated with the lack of a response from the Ministry of Energy and Resources, they held a press conference in Regina on Jan. 11. First, some background. The Weyburn unit of Cenovus Energy, formerly EnCana, is one of the largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in the world. The purpose of pumping CO2 underground is to markedly improve the recovery of oil underground, a concept called enhanced oil recovery, or EOR. The carbon dioxide originates at a coal gasification plant in North Dakota, and is pipelined to the field south of Weyburn. There, it is used as a miscible flood to push crude oil out of the ground, 1.4 kilometres underground. Some of the carbon dioxide comes back up with the produced oil, and is recycled for further flooding use. A net of two million tonnes

of CO2 remains underground each year. Barry Robinson, a lawyer with Ecojustice (formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund) spoke to Pipeline News from Calgary. Robinson represents the Kerrs. Their property is SW 30-5-13-W2, southwest of the main Cenovus Goodwater plant. Cenovus began injecting CO2 in the area in 2000. In 2003, the Kerrs had begun excavating sand and gravel. The excavation had ﬁlled with water, and this was the area the Kerrs became concerned about. The Kerrs ﬁrst began seeing unusual things in 2004, he said. Bubbles were observed in pond; they found dead animals, including a goat, cats, rabbit and birds near the pond. “They’ve asked the public to test for CO2,” Robinson said. Robinson stated Cenovus, the Ministry of Energy and Resources and the Kerrs agreed in the fall 2007 that the ministry would conduct a year-long investigation into soil, water and air quality on the Kerrs’ property. The ministry took water and air samples on a single day in July 2008. They did not take tests for CO2, he said. Tests for were taken for CO, SO2, NO x, O3, H2S and particulates. The testing apparatus for hydrocarbons was apparently not working that day, according to Robinson. Only one air sample was taken at the property line, he said, and it wasn’t near the ponds. ɸ Page A7

Molopo to spend $59 million Molopo Energy Canada Ltd. established a budget of $59 million for its exploration and development program in fiscal 2011, which contemplates drilling up to 41 gross (30.8 net) appraisal and development wells in the Spearfish formation and one Torquay gross (0.5 net) exploration well in the Bakken formation. Molopo drilled 35 gross (27.8 net) horizontal and two gross (1.5 net) vertical wells on its Spearfish properties during the four months ended Oct. 31, 2010. As of Oct. 31, 2010, 24 gross (18.2 net) of these wells were completed and producing, eight had been cased and were awaiting fracture stimulation, two were categorized as contingent completions and three had been deemed to be uneconomic. Two existing shut-in wells were also brought on production during the period. An additional one gross (one net) saltwater disposal well was drilled during November. Molopo’s Bakken properties are located in southeastern Saskatchewan. As at Oct. 31, the company held a 100 per cent working interest in 45,148 acres and four producing wells in the area. Production commenced in early 2010 and ranged from 30 – 40 bbls a day of light crude oil during October. Briefs courtesy Nickle’s Daily Oil Bulletin

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WAYNE HEIN Estevan, Sask. Cell: 421-9555

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EDITORIAL

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Pipeline News Publisher: Brant Kersey - Estevan Ph: 1.306.634.2654 Fax: 1.306.634.3934

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Editorial Contributions: SOUTHEAST Brian Zinchuk - Estevan 1.306.461.5599 SOUTHWEST Swift Current 1.306.461.5599 NORTHWEST Geoﬀ Lee - Lloydminster 1.780.875.6685

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Pipeline News Estevan, SK Ph: 306.634.1015 Fax: 306.634.1041 Published monthly by Glacier Ventures International Corporation, Central Oﬃce, Estevan, Saskatchewan. Advertising rates are available upon request and are subject to change without notice. Conditions of editorial and advertising content: Pipeline News attempts to be accurate, however, no guarantee is given or implied. Pipeline News reserves the right to revise or reject any or all editorial and advertising content as the newspapers’ principles see ﬁt. Pipeline News will not be responsible for more than one incorrect insertion of an advertisement, and is not responsible for errors in advertisements except for the space occupied by such errors. Pipeline News will not be responsible for manuscripts, photographs, negatives and other material that may be submitted for possible publication. All of Pipeline News content is protected by Canadian Copyright laws. Reviews and similar mention of material in this newspaper is granted on the provision that Pipeline News receives credit. Otherwise, any reproduction without permission of the publisher is prohibited. Advertisers purchase space and circulation only. Rights to the advertisement produced by Pipeline News, including artwork, typography, and photos, etc., remain property of this newspaper. Advertisements or parts thereof may be not reproduced or assigned without the consent of the publisher. The Glacier group of companies collects personal information from our customers in the normal course of business transactions. We use that information to provide you with our products and services you request. On occasion we may contact you for purposes of research, surveys and other such matters. To provide you with better service we may share your information with our sister companies and also outside, selected third parties who perform work for us as suppliers, agents, service providers and information gatherers.

Editorial

The word on everyone’s lips: housing It is exceptionally rare in the news business to hear one message from so many different people, yet that is exactly what happened this past month. In an unbroken string, every business Pipeline News spoke to in southeast Saskatchewan, particularly Estevan, said they had one major concern above all others: housing. This edition may have focused on completions, but it just as easily could have been renamed the housing shortage in southeast Saskatchewan issue. We heard this from service rig operators, drilling companies, a supply store, a frac company, a cement outfit, a fibreglass pipeline supplier, a rod supplier, a manufacturer - you name it, they said it. The No. 1 issue in southeast Saskatchewan is housing, and closely tied to it is labour. At least 12 businesses in a row told us this. Specifically, they cannot get labour to fill jobs, good paying ones, because there is simply nowhere for them to live. Let’s rephrase that a bit. There’s nowhere affordable for them to live. As of Jan. 16, there were 74 properties listed in Estevan on Realtor.ca. However, the prices for the most part are well beyond the reach of many people, especially those who may be in a new job. It’s kind of hard to get a $300,000 mortgage when you’re in a starting position with a new company, even if the starting wage is $24 an hour. At the same time, the Jan. 12 edition of the Estevan Mercury, our sister publication, announced on its front page that “Estevan’s population [is] booming.” “According to the 2010 covered population statistics, which were released in December by the provincial Ministry of Health, the Energy City has 12,876 residents, up from 11,304 in 2009,” the Mercury reported. “City manager Jim Puffalt said they were anticipating an increase but admitted a jump of roughly 14 per cent was beyond their expectations. "We were expecting to see about 12,000 or so, but to see 12,876, it was just like, wow," said Puffalt who added that City records show this is the highest Estevan's population has ever been,” the Mercury stated. While the city has added nearly 1,600 people, it has added scant dozens of new housing units. If that number is accurate, where did they all go?

The Saskatchewan South East Enterprise Region has been studying the issue, and put out the results of a survey of Estevan businesses in conjunction with the Estevan and District Board of Tourism, Trade & Commerce. “The results are quite dramatic” according to Edie Spagrud, CEO of SSEER. “While it was certainly well known that the housing shortage is hurting a lot of area businesses, Estevan survey results show the extent of that shortage is even more serious than we expected.” In turn, several of the companies we spoke to said they had people interested in working in southeast Saskatchewan, but those people could not find housing. Many were from Ontario, Atlantic Canada or British Columbia, and were qualified workers. There was simply nowhere for them to go, and as such, they had to turn down the job offers. Additionally, of all the companies on that above list, each and every one of them either had jobs they were seeking to fill, or had recently hired people. There were at least 50 new job positions we encountered. These were by and large permanent positions, ones that are befitting permanent residence like an apartment. No one wants to stay in a hotel or camp forever, and the employers don’t want them in those temporary accommodations, either. As one explained, if they are living out of a suitcase in a hotel already, there’s nothing stopping them from jumping ship in the middle of the night for a better offer, leaving you hanging. Yes, there are new camps in the region. Yes, there are new hotels recently opened or under construction. But the anemic construction of multi-family units is grossly out of sync with reality. The argument “this boom will never last” is a loser’s attitude that permeated this province for decades, and has no place in a Saskatchewan that is leading the nation is so many ways. For the record, the first oil wells were drilled in southeast Saskatchewan in the ’50s. Yes, there were lean years. But the oilpatch has been active in this region for nearly 60 years, and is still going strong. We think it’s going to last. Someone, please, build some apartments that people can afford to live in.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Opinion Can’t ¿nd enough men? Expand your thinking From the top of the pile Brian Zinchuk

Every so often I get together with the staff of the Saskatchewan South East Enterprise Region (SSEER) and have a little chat over things in the oilpatch. The SSEER has embarked on an ambitious project to speak to oilfield companies in the region and find out what their concerns are, and hopefully find ways to address them. By mid-December they had done a good chunk of the northern part of the region, visiting places like Kisbey, Carlyle, Kennedy and the like, and had meaningful conversations with 79 oilfield businesses to that point. To date, they had about a 40 per cent success rate in getting through to talk to these people, much more than I anticipated when we talked about them launching the project. I expected a high number of businesses to say, “You’re from the government? Go away!” Two important items came out of the early meetings, ones I had anticipated – housing and labour. With rig activity running high in December (still at 91 active drilling rigs less than a week before Christmas) and projected to be going flat out in early 2011, labour is also understandably tight.

As I was chatting with the SSEER staff while walking out the door it dawned on me how to address this shortage of men. Fill those positions with women. The oilpatch, particularly in field positions, is still heavily, almost extremely, male dominated. In nearly three years covering this industry, I can only recall seeing two all-female crews while out in the field. One was a three-woman pipeline measuring crew for a Lampman-based outfit, and the other was pair of women running a vac truck, based in Carlyle. That’s it. It is exceptionally rare for me to see even one or two women out in the field, be it welding, operating heavy equipment, driving truck, or especially on rig crews. To date, I have only come across one female rig hand, and she was for the most part out of the business, running a bar. At the time she would still pick up the occasional shift. You will find a few women in safety, but that’s about it for field positions. Contrast this to last month, when Pipeline News focused on finance and admin. Nearly all the admin staff I encountered were women. The gender divide is alive and well in the oilpatch. The time for that divide is over. Women have proven themselves in the military, in medicine and law; all fields that were almost exclusively the domain of men a few decades ago. Indeed, most medical and law students are now women, to the point where women will not only catch up, but likely surpass men in these fields in the next decade or two. In an article on how testing methodology impacted the number of men getting into

medical school, The Globe and Mail noted on Dec. 12, “In 2002, nearly 77 per cent of students admitted to McMaster’s MD program were women, but by 2009, the school had restored some balance, with 61 per cent women.” Captain Nichola Goddard was the first Canadian woman combat soldier killed in battle. She died in 2006 during a firefight in the Panjwaye District of Afghanistan. Goddard was a forward observation officer with the 1st Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. If she could handle the rigours of combat in Afghanistan as an officer, I’m quite sure she would have been capable of working on floor of a drilling rig. So, yes, there may be a shortage of men, particularly in the southeast. But is there a shortage of women? Are women applying, and not getting hired, or simply not applying? My guess is more of the latter than the former. Are many women taking up the technical trades, like welding, machining, or boilerman? Meat packer Schneiders has a long-running advertisement about women going to work in their plants during the Second World War because the men had gone off to war, and they needed someone to do the work. Perhaps that’s some of the thinking we need now. Will this require an attitude adjustment by some people? Sure. But since this is 2011, they should have had their attitudes adjusted a long time ago. When looking for new hires, broaden your horizons. You need more than a few good men. Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.

Mackenzie pipeline ruling begs questions The Mackenzie Gas Project has been more than 30 years in the making. The National Energy Board (NEB) finally began hearings in 2006. Now that the NEB has approved various applications for the construction of a 1,196 kilometre gas pipeline by a consortium of companies led by Imperial Oil, questions about cost benefits come into play. The pipeline project was revived in 2000 when natural gas prices were climbing and supplies looked tight, but today the market has been swamped by cheap, abundant and readily accessible shale gas. That alone makes it difficult for the project group to justify spending Imperial’s now inflated 2007 cost estimate of $16 billion to construct the pipeline and related facilities. In addition, Imperial Oil makes continued reference to the need for a fiscal framework with the federal government in order to put construction on the front burner. The consortium has until late 2013 to decide if the project is worth building, given the current value of natural gas and high construction costs. A fiscal framework could mean that taxpayers will be on the hook for a costly project that could

Lee Side of Lloyd Geoff Lee

wind up being led by the federal government with industry in tow. Hints to this eﬀect come with the NEB’s Reasons for Decisions document. “Natural gas price trends remain uncertain,” said the panel. “We do not agree with those who say these are reasons to deny the project. “Our approval gives Mackenzie Delta gas an opportunity to compete. Denial would block that opportunity.” Had natural gas prices been low in 2000, the project would not have been revived since economics always rule the day for oil and gas companies – a fact proven by the NEB’s next statement.

“It is up to the companies to decide whether the project makes economic sense for them based on their view of natural gas prices and project costs.” No doubt that decision will be largely inﬂuenced by the content and meaning of a federal ﬁscal framework and how much taxpayers’ money could be staked in the project. On the plus side, federal investment in the construction of the pipeline would generate thousands of jobs and taxpayers’ money could be recouped from taxes and royalties over the 20 year operation of the system. In addition, natural gas prices could rise or surpass 2000 levels at some time in the future making the project seem like a bargain. Either way, there is a lot at stake for the consortium of companies and the Aboriginal communities in Canada’s north in the pipeline that the NEB determines is in the public interest. “We recognize that the Mackenzie Gas Project would have much larger and more far-reaching effects than previous developments in the north,” said the panel. Only time will tell who wants to buy in – and at what cost.

PIPELINE NEWS INVITES OPPOSING VIEW POINTS. EDITORIALS AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ARE WELCOME. Email to: brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Lots of jobs, nowhere to live ɺ Page A2 All of those businesses had either recently hired staff, or were earnestly looking for people. One, in its start-up phase, was looking for approximately 35 people. The Estevan Mercury reported on Jan. 12, “According to the 2010 covered population statistics, which were released in December by the provincial Ministry of Health, the Energy City has 12,876 residents, up from 11,304 in 2009.” Mr. Cyrenne went on to say, “Because we have an economic boom happening in the region, it is easy to get complacent. One thing that easily gets lost in the current oil activity is all those businesses that are not directly linked to that industry. If we do not get some better action on housing in this region, there will be long term negative impacts for Estevan and the entire southeast. “We need to keep working to diversify our economy and those businesses that supply other markets are having difficulty growing. New businesses will also avoid this area of the province if it is that difficult to house workers and their families,” he said. One positive result of the survey is the strong indication that local employers have in housing investments. Half the businesses surveyed said they would seriously consider investing their own money in housing projects. “Of course that does not mean there are cheques in the mail, but the number of businesses who have already made investments for employee housing is an indication that they are serious” said Cyrenne. The survey is one piece of the regional housing initiative underway by SSEER. In a release, SSEER said a group of community leaders from several southeast communities have pledged their co-op-

With the population surging to over 13,000 this apartment building will help, but not solve, the housing issues that plague Estevan. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

eration in working together to address the housing shortage. A special meeting of stakeholders with the regional housing initiative took place on Jan. 18 to discuss and plan municipalities’ role in the housing issue. Additionally, through the work of a consultant,

diﬀerent housing alternatives are being examined along with sourcing developers and others willing to invest in the region. The consultant’s report and recommendations will be completed before the end of March.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Couple claims injected CO2 coming to surface, Cenovus says that’s not the case ɺ Page A3 “Cenovus Energy and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Energy and Resources failed to properly monitor and investigate the possibility of a CO2 leak during the last six years,” said Robinson in a press release. “Furthermore, they left the Kerrs in the position of having to prove there was a problem when it was the ministry’s duty to investigate releases from oil and gas activities.” Since then, he said both Cenovus and the ministry have refused to conduct further studies on the property. A petroleum geologist assisting the Kerrs suggested that CO2 leakage could be occurring through faults and fractures or through abandoned oil and gas wells. Robinson said there are 25 active or abandoned wells within one mile of the Kerr’s land. There is one production well and one salt water injection well on their quarter, he added. The Kerrs’ concern, according to Robinson, is the possibility of CO2 seeping into basements if there is a high content of CO2 in the soil. “Is it healthy living in a house on this property?” he asked. The Kerrs were concerned enough that they essentially abandoned the idea of living in their house, moving into a hotel for several months before renting accommodations and eventually moving to Regina. They since decided to commission their own study. In July 2010, the Kerrs retained Petro-Find GeoChem, a Saskatoon-based consulting company, to conduct soil gas studies on their property. The report states, “A geochemical soil gas survey of the Kerr property, which is situated in the Wey-

"Is it healthy living in a house on this property?" - Barry Robinson, Lawyer for the Kerrs burn Field currently undergoing Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), showed high concentrations of CO2 that averaged about 23,000 ppm (2.3 per cent) over most of the property and a major anomaly with concentrations as high as 110,607 ppm (11 per cent) in the north central part of the property. “The provenance or source of the high concentrations of CO2 in soils of the Kerr property is clearly the anthropogenic CO2 injected into the Weyburn reservoir. Source of the CO2 is clearly established by: (a) a stable carbon isotope ratio approximating the known ratio of the injected anthropogenic gas received by pipeline from North Dakota; (b) a major shift from baseline values; and (c) a much heavier carbon isotope ratio than for biogenic CO2.” “Near the potable water well NW of the abandoned residence the CO2 concentration is about 4,300 ppm, but at 2-300 metres to the NW of the house it is 110,607 ppm (at the epicenter of the major anomaly), and within a radius of 100 metres it is 17,000 ppm, a concentration that far exceeds the

threshold level for health concerns.” Petro-Find Geochem found unusually high CO2 and methane levels in the soil on the property. An analysis of the measured CO2 done by a research laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan “clearly indicated that the leaking CO2 is not naturally occurring and is similar in composition to the CO2 injected in the Weyburn ﬁeld,” according to Robinson. The report went on to say, “The survey clearly shows the usefulness of geochemical soil gas surveys in assessing EOR projects for leakage of CO2 and light hydrocarbons and exploring for oil and gas in mature oil ﬁelds. The survey also demonstrates that the overlying thick cap rock of anhydrite over the Weyburn reservoir is not an impermeable barrier to the upward movement of light hydrocarbons and CO2 as is generally thought.” The Kerrs do not have freehold mineral rights on the land, but they do have surface leases for wells and pipelines, paid by Cenovus. Robinson said hypothetically if 0.1 per cent of carbon dioxide is coming to the surface, then 99.9 per cent staying underground is still good. “But if it is on your land, you still have a problem.” “What we want is investigation. Have you ever measured for CO2 on the Kerr’s land? Will you? And if not, why not?” Robinson said. He also said they want to know what caused the animal deaths around the pond. “Why is it the Kerrs’ responsibility?” The Kerrs gave their report to the Ministry of Energy and Resources in October 2010. Having no reply by January, they went public with their concerns. ɸ Page A8

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Family moves out of house over concerns "It’s just not happening. It really isn’t." - Rhonda DelFari, Cenovus Spokesperson ɺ Page A7 Sour ﬁeld In May 2010, Pipeline News visited the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah, North Dakota, where the gas used in the Cenovus Weyburn unit is produced. While it is mostly carbon dioxide, it is not pure carbon dioxide. A small percentage is H2S, or hydrogen

sulphide, also known as sour gas. While the PetroFind Geochem study tested for isotopes of carbon dioxide, it did not test for H2S. Cenovus responds Rhona DelFrari, communications manager for Cenovus, told Pipeline News, “We do not have CO2 leaking through the ground.

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over the same area multiple times over time, like time lapse photography. The area in question on the Kerrs’ land is 2 kilometres away from the closest injection wells, she noted. Producing wells need to be placed 100 to 500 metres away from injecting wells, otherwise they won’t see the benefit of the CO2 flood. “It won’t travel farther,” she said. She pointed out Texas has been injecting CO2 for decades. As for concerns about algae, she said algae is everywhere. “It’s just not happening. It really isn’t,” DelFari said. Asked why Cenovus hasn’t simply bought out the Kerrs, she responded, “That’s not the kind of company we are. We don’t want to buy your land. If there are concerns, we want to adThis is a typical CO2 injector well in the Cenovus Weyburn Àeld. File photo dress it.” “It’s important peoRegarding isotope ple put this into context,” We’re very confident in history with the Kerrs over a decade on various analysis, DelFrari said, DelFrari said, noting the that. “This report came issues. Over that time, “We’ve found the same Weyburn unit has been out a few weeks ago. We they have hired numer- isotopes before any CO2 studied by numerous have a lot of concerns ous independent consul- was injected.” scientists for years with “We do not inject peer-reviewed studies. tants, and, according to with it.” Cenovus has since DelFrari, “Every single CO2 on their property,” See related stories: hired three external con- time, all the tests come she said. PRTC – Page A9 “We have to know sultants to review the back negative.” IPAC – Page A10 Petro-Find Geochem “These studies have where the CO2 goes,” On the Web: been done over and over DelFrari explained. This report. For a copy of the DelFrari said Ceno- again,” she said, adding is done by “four-dimen- report commissioned by vus (and its predecessor, it’s been investigated sional” seismic surveys, the Kerrs, go to http:// doing seismic surveys bit.ly/i4FLTp Encana) has had a long numerous times.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

PRTC refutes study, says CO2 has not migrated to surface Regina - The reaction from the research community which has been studying the carbon dioxide flood project in the Weyburn oilfield to allegations carbon dioxide is leaking from the formation has been unequivocal: they feel there are no leaks, and the study making those allegations was flawed. Cameron and Jane Kerr held a press conference in conjunction with Ecojustice in Regina on Jan. 11 Alleging carbon dioxide was leaking to the surface on their home quarter near Goodwater, and as a result, they had moved away from the farm several years before. The Kerr’s commissioned a study into it, and released that study on Jan. 11. On Jan. 19, the Regina-based Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC), on behalf of the IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project, released an assessment of the PetroFind Geochem Ltd. report (“Geochemical Soil Gas Survey: A Site Investigation of SW30-5-13-W2M Weyburn Field, Saskatchewan”), which claims that CO2 is leaking from the Weyburn oil field onto the Kerr family farm located at the southern limits of the oil field. The PTRC is a not-for-profit independent research organization and is the technical manager of the IEAGHG Project. Since the early days of the Weyburn carbon dioxide flood, it has been studied. It’s billed as the world’s first CO2 measuring, monitoring and verification initiative. It is under the auspices of the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas research and development program. The PTRC stated that researchers, engi-

neers, geologists and geophysicists involved in the IEAGHG project have reviewed the Petro-Find report and concluded that it does not support its claim that “CO2 in soils of the Kerr property is clearly the anthropogenic CO2 injected into the Weyburn reservoir.” The IEAGHG Project includes researchers from 30 diﬀerent Canadian and international universities, research councils, geological surveys, and consultancies. “The Petro-Find report was examined by experts who have been studying the Weyburn oil ﬁeld for more than ten years,” noted Dr. Malcolm Wilson, the Executive Director of the PTRC. “They examined every claim made in the report, from carbon isotope ratios said to be markers of the CO2 underground at Weyburn, to discussions of high

CO2 readings in the soil, to claims of open faults. They found no data in the report that can support the assertions that CO2 has migrated through the geological storage system to the surface.” Dr. Steve Whittaker, senior project manager, noted that the international research program at Weyburn is the world’s largest and most extensive independent study of CO2 being stored in the subsurface. “Soil survey baselines taken before CO2 began to be injected, and numerous published and peer-reviewed scientiﬁc papers, draw into question claims of unusually high readings on the Kerr property,” said Whittaker. A review of the Petro-Find report is available at the PTRC’s website at www.ptrc.ca

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A10

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

IPAC-CO2 launches independent study into Kerr family farm Regina – A Regina based research group has swung into action to investigate allegations of a possible leak of carbon dioxide from geological storage south of Weyburn. IPAC-CO2 Research Inc. is assembling a team of international experts to conduct an independent performance assessment of protocols and practices in the Weyburn carbon capture and storage (CCS) project following complaints by Cameron and Jane Kerr about the possibility of leaks at their family farm near Goodwater. IPAC-CO2 is an environmental, non-government organization created in 2009 to gain public and regulator conﬁdence in the geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a sustainable energy and environmental option by providing independent performance

assessments of the projects. “This will be a fact-based review,” explained Carmen Dybwad, IPAC’s chief executive officer. “The object is not to determine fault or point fingers. It is simply an analysis of whether there is leakage and, if so, to discover its root cause. Results of this independent study will help establish the “best practices” for future CCS projects that include an Enhanced Oil Recovery component.” A detailed list of the team members will be released once all of the experts have been confirmed. Participants in the project, so far, include experts from the Gulf Coast Carbon Center at the University of Texas and Carbon Management Canada Ltd., a network of 22 Canadian universities researching large-scale ways to reduce

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carbon emissions in the fossil fuel industry. To participate in the independent review each expert must not have had any previous association with the Weyburn project, Dybwad said. “We will apply the nine-step protocol for site assessment we developed while working with the Canadian Standards Association to draft the world’s ﬁrst standard for geologic storage of carbon dioxide,” she said. The draft, which establishes a binational standard, is being reviewed by a technical committee of almost three dozen experts from Canada and the

United States. The new standard will also be used as a basis for international standards through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Cameron and Jane Kerr held a news conference on January 11, 2011 in Regina demanding a full public investigation of problems at their farm located near the Cenovus Energy carbon capture and storage site. The Kerrs said they had ﬁrst noticed changes in surface water and well water on their property in 2004, one year after carbon dioxide injection in the area had begun.

Bonspiels coming up Swift Current’s 45th Annual OTS bonspiel and will be held March 25th and 25th at the Swift Current I-Plex. It will be Skins format and they will accept the ﬁrst 24 rinks. Entries are due Wednesday March 18th and the entry fee is $280. It includes all meals, three games and the chance to put some

cash in your pockets, according to Ron Eichel, one of the organizers. He added there will be lots of door prizes and a chance to win a trip for four to somewhere warm. All inquiries can be sent to Ron Eichel at ron.eichel@canam.com Estevan Oilﬁeld Technical Society will

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hold its annual bonspiel on Mar. 24-27. Details were being ﬁnalized at press time, but information will be posted at www.estevanots.com in early February. The Weyburn OTS held its bonspiel Jan. 28-29. Watch for coverage in the next Pipeline News.

Elkwater acquires producing assets Elkwater Resources Ltd. says it has entered into a formal agreement, subject to industry standard closing conditions, with an arm’s length company to purchase producing oil and gas assets primarily located in the Lashburn and Sufﬁeld areas of Saskatchewan and the Pembina and Ewing Lake areas of Alberta. The purchase price is $5 million cash, subject to closing adjustments, which is expected to be funded using cash on hand and an expanded bank credit facility. The transaction had an effective date of Dec. 1, 2010 and is scheduled to close after receipt by vendor of all required approvals. Current production from the properties is estimated at net 170 boepd, comprised of 125 bpd of heavy oil, 15 bpd of light oil and natural gas liquids and 30 boepd a day of natural gas. Approximately one half of the production is operated.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

A11

Anatomy of a frac completion From a service rigâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective Â&#x201E; By Brian Zinchuk Estevan â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has become the standard completion technique for most new wells in southeast Saskatchewan. One of the key components in making a frac happen is the work done by the service rigs, both before and after the frac. Pipeline News spoke with Tim Huber, general manager of Estevanbased Independent Well Servicing Ltd. (IWS), about the role of a service rig in a typical Bakken horizontal well frac completion. This is a general outline, and implementation in the ďŹ eld varies depending on the application and well. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Most of the completions going on right now are in the Bakken play,â&#x20AC;? he said. The vast majority of new wells in southeast Saskatchewan are fracked, according to Huber, because most are in the Bakken play. Horizontal wells in other zones tend to be acidized or produced open-hole. Approximately 95 per cent of the completions IWS does are horizontal wells. About two per cent are oil producing vertical wells. The remainder are disposal or injection wells. Frac prep Frac jobs are typically done in two stages. The ďŹ rst stage is referred to as the frac prep. The frac liner will either be installed by the drilling rig while it is still on site and immediately after the well is drilled to its total depth, or it will be installed by a service rig on a subsequent visit to the well. Who installs the frac liner â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a string of packers, frac ports and liner pipe is in transition right now. Huber said approximately 60 per cent are being installed by the drilling rig, with the remaining 40 per cent being put in by the service rig. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are getting into more cases where the drilling rig installs the frac liner,â&#x20AC;? he said. When asked why, he responded, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The drilling rig is already there. A lot

of guys are going to a 4.5 inch liner. The drilling rig is already tripping into the horizontal section. For them to run the liner is more than economical.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;If the linerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been run with the drilling rig, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll come in and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll retrieve the bridge plug if thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bridge plug in the hole. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Then we run in the rest of the pipe and latch onto the liner and circulate down onto the liner. Once weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve latched onto the liner, we ensure a good seal by pressure testing the back side of the liner,â&#x20AC;? Huber explained. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our crew then installs the frac head at the surface. We take oďŹ&#x20AC; our BOPS (blowout preventer system) and install a frac head for the frac trucks to hook onto. Once the frac head is installed, the service rig will rig out and move oďŹ&#x20AC;.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can knock it oďŹ&#x20AC; in a day and a half to two days,â&#x20AC;? Huber said, based on 10-12 hour days. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Service rigs have always been day work generally in the southeast corner. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re working cased hole and we can shut in the hole at night.â&#x20AC;? In this hypothetical case it is a ball-style frac, where ever increasing ball sizes are dropped down the well and used to set frac ports open. É¸ Page A13

Independent Well Servicingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s general manager Tim Huber has been working with service rigs for 30 years, yet heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always seeing new things when it comes to completions. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

A13

Bakken wells typically produce sand ɺ Page A11 The ball is caught by a conical seat, allowing it to seal off the remainder of the well and open up the frac port when hydraulic pressure is applied. Rig returns After the frac is complete, the service rig returns. “After the frac is done, we’ll move back on the well, bleed the well off, make sure the well is dead, remove the frac head and then pull all the pipe out,” Huber said. “We’ll pull the frac string (from the liner hanger at the top of the frac liner, at the heel of the well) that we’ve run in beforehand. Then we run back in, generally speaking with a smaller diameter pipe, and swab the well. Swabbing involves running a rubberized cup on the end of a 1/2 inch cable. The cup pulls fluid out when the cable is pulled out of the hole. Swabbing recovers load fluid and excess sand. If there is too much sand, they may have to stop swabbing and circulate the sand out. Sand comes from the formation and from the frac operations itself. Sand is used as a propping agent to keep the fractures open in the formation. Normally swabbing is done for a day to a day and a half, with each swab taking approximately 10 to 15 minutes. “You’re trying to clean the well up,” he explained. They will also want to recover the frac balls. Natural flow of the well usually brings them back. “Once we know the well’s cleaned up to a certain degree, we run production. We pull the tubing back out of the hole and configure it for production,” he said. There are a variety of pumps that can be installed, from progressing cavity or electric submersible, to insert pumps. Rods are also installed. The snuffing box, flow-T, and polish rod are put in. If the pumpjack is present, they will hook it up. At that point, the well is essentially complete. Sand “Sand is really the kicker that will restrict the production of the well,” Huber said. “Any Bakken well that’s been fracked will always produce sand over a period of time.” If the well starts to lose production, one of the ways to open it up is to drill out the seats on the frac

ports. This can be done by pulling everything out of the hole and running coil tubing with a mud motor on the end to drill it out. This is becoming fairly common, according to Huber. The second method is to use a service rig to run smaller pipe, such as 2-3/8 inch, and use a mud motor to drill out the seats. Monobores A technique that is gaining traction with some producers is called the monobore. Instead of using packers and frac ports, the liner is cemented right from the heel to the toe of the well. A “brasor jet” at the end of coil tubing is uses high pressure water and sand to cut through the liner, cement, and into the formation. Then it is fracked. It can be done multiple times along the horizontal section, wherever desired. Huber said the advantages include not having to leave a string of tools underground “which you will never see again.” If those tools should fail, “you can’t recover them

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out of the hole.” There is always a chance of failure, he noted. The monobore type of completion is growing in demand, Huber said. “If they want to go in and refrac, all they have to do is bring their coil tubing unit in.” He started seeing a shift to monobores over the last year. Now, he’s seeing high usage of that system. “Three or four years ago, there were no packers in the hole, and all the fracking was open hole with coil tubing,” he said. “Before that, no one was even fracking horizontals.” It’s a testament to the rapid changes in the technology of completions. “In all honesty, that is what is so interesting about this industry how fast technology changes. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and have never been bored. It’s always something new. We were drilling Bakken wells 25 years ago, but with two metres of pay,” Huber said.

A14

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Focused on quality men and equipment Estevan â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Independent Well Servicing Ltd. is going full bore with the strong push for service rigs this winter. All eight rigs are expected to be active until break-up. The Estevan-based company started putting equipment together in 2003. Three partners Tim Huber, Jerry Mehler and Brian Crossman, plus a number of additional investors, are behind the company. Huber acts as general manager. Mehler is the ďŹ eld supervisor. Crossman does sales and is rig manager of Rig 8, their newest rig. Rig 8 was added in April, 2010. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The plan is to run at least a year with the current ďŹ&#x201A;eet,â&#x20AC;? said Huber. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our ďŹ rst three rigs were among the ďŹ rst freestanding doubles in the country,â&#x20AC;? he added. â&#x20AC;&#x153;All our rigs are classiďŹ ed as free-standing mobile triple-doubles,â&#x20AC;? he said. The ďŹ rst three were built in Red Deer, Alta. They built Rig 4 themselves in Estevan. Rigs 5 through 8 saw their carriers built in Edmonton, and the derrick,

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drawworks and the like were brought in from China. The rest of the rig packages were built in Estevan. â&#x20AC;&#x153;One of the investors is involved with manufacturing plants in China,â&#x20AC;? Huber explained. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We had a general plan to build eight rigs, depending on demand,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Right now our plan is for consolidating, making sure our people gain more experience, and leaving our eyes and ears open for future opportunities.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Some of the biggest things weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tried to do from the beginning are paying good wages with above average beneďŹ ts, promoting our strong commitment to safety and building quality equipment in order to attract quality employees, which we feel we have.â&#x20AC;? Huber said they pay above industry standard wages, and the company pays the whole shot for beneďŹ ts, as opposed to a co-pay program. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Both are things we pride ourselves on. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our people are our biggest asset.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;We believe youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re getting a good product when you hire us, with experienced people. Most of our rig managers have 10 to 20 years experience,â&#x20AC;? he said. IWS has approximately 60 people on staďŹ&#x20AC;, including shop personnel, admin and management. Personnel is always a challenge, he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Most of our guys are local, and have been with us for several years, including working with us at previous companies.â&#x20AC;? IWS focuses its operations area on southeast Saskatchewan. They have done work in the Regina and Saskatoon area for potash and for natural gas and propane storage. Huber said the company is looking at new technology all the time. It was an early adopter of digital sandline recorders, for instance. They also have digital readouts for triplex pumps. The company believes in innovations to make things easier on the men, including oversized rig ďŹ&#x201A;oors and large doghouses with air conditioning, refrigerators and bathrooms that also have an oďŹ&#x192;ce area. Each rig crew has a picker on the truck used to

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A15

Acklands-Grainger ¿rst in new Estevan industrial park

Acklands-Grainger was the Àrst business to move into the new Glen Peterson Industrial Park in Estevan.

Estevan – Acklands-Grainger is the first company to establish a presence in the new Glen Peterson Industrial Park on the east side of Estevan. The company moved into its new store on Dec. 3 The move greatly improves accessibility and parking for Acklands-Grainger, which had been located in downtown Estevan. Branch manager Doug Greenwald said, “It’ a lot more accessible. Big trucks and trailers can get to us now. Access was one of the key things.” Indeed, they are now a lot closer to many of their clients. Acklands-Grainger specialies in industrial, safety and fastener products, from hard hats to hammers. Greenwald said that includes, “from what’s hanging from the ceiling to what cleans the floor. Each location tailors its inventory to the local clientele, Greenwald explained. In Estevan, that means the oilpatch, coal mining, SaskPower, and construction. In particular, oil and gas customers are frequent visitors. “They need stuff every day,” he said, pointing out that the busiest time of day is in the early morning. To a lesser extent, crews coming back in the afternoon might pick up some supplies late in the after-

noon. “We had outgrown the other building,” Greenwald said. As for the new building, he said everyone loves it. The new facility is 7,000 sq.-ft, 1500 sq.-ft. larger than the previous one. However, it is also a lot taller, allowing for 20-ft. racks in the warehouse, nearly three times the height of their previous racking. The inventory will be similar to before, but larger, according to Greenwald.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Mongoose frac system takes accuracy to a new level By Elsie Ross New Technology Magazine (Editor’s Note: This article is republished from our sister publication New Technology Magazine, which originally ran this piece in its October, 2010 edition. The Mongoose system of well stimulation was specifically mentioned by Penn West officials during Pipeline News’ visit to their Waskada field last fall, and was their preferred method of well stimulation in that field at that time.) It might be an older wellbore design, but the monobore is anything

but old-fashioned when it’s used in a new fracturing system targeting multi-zone horizontal wells. NCS Energy Services Inc.’s proprietary Mongoose System frac tool and Mongoose Jet Frac System can deliver fast, eﬀective stimulation at a considerable cost saving, says Don Getzlaf, who with long-time business associate Marty Stromquist is a principal in the company’s Canadian operation. “We believe this is a step-change,” says Getzlaf. He and Stromquist,

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who met while working for Halliburton, hold process pending patents for the Mongoose. “We believed this process was the right way to go but nobody was doing it so we went out there and started ﬁguring out how to do it and developing the tools,” says Getzlaf. “We design, make the changes and manufacture the tool within our company.” Coiled tubing conveys the tool down the cemented wellbore, allowing for multi-zone perforating, isolation and fracture stimulation on a single trip. “You go down with the coil and set a packer, anchor the coil so it doesn’t move, then pump high pressure water and sand [perforate] and cut a hole and then the next step is to pump down the annulus

and frac,” says Getzlaf. “Then you pull the packer up to the next interval to be treated and set it and cut and frac, repeating the process.” Getzlaf compares the tool’s mechanism to that of a ballpoint pen. “‘Click,’ one time it sets and then ‘click’ and it unsets and you go back down the hole,” he says. “We have a packer on there, you pull up and you push down again and you can’t go down; the packer has set and you are ready to pressure test.” On cemented wellbores, the frac will be initiated within the area that was perforated. “When it’s openhole, you don’t know where the frac is starting, or it might run the risk of bypassing [the formation],” says Getzlaf. “When we

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set a bridge plug and frac, we know exactly where our fracs are and we always stress to our customers whatever they want ... they can go anywhere [in the wellbore] as long as we start down at the bottom and work up.” It’s not unusual for NCS to do 20 to 30 fracs on one trip with a pacesetting 40 stages on a single trip. The company has done up to 20 intervals in a 10-hour period. The distance between fracs is between 20 and 100 metres and the trend is toward more fracs and tighter spacing, he says. The Mongoose system is more economic than some of its competitors because the major cost involved is a cement job for the full length of the wellbore, a cost of about $40,000, says Getzlaf, whose customers report estimated cost savings of between $100,000 and $300,000 per well. “Once the coil is in the hole, it doesn’t really cost that much more.” The system also offers greater ﬂexibility in frac design compared to other systems that rely on a pre-designed sleeve. “We can monitor the

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pressure in the coil and tell what the formation will accept in sand and can change frac design on the fly, which is very important for precision placement stimulation,” he says. “Some of the primary advantages are pumping at conventional rates with conventional equipment while enabling pinpoint placement with very low risk to sand offs,” adds Stromquist. If the formation sands off, the process can be stopped and the casing can be circulated clean before restarting the stimulation or moving to the next level. The process, which it has applied to patent, was invented by Getzlaf, Stromquist and Robert Nipper, NCS president. “With the use of the dead string, stimulations can be placed with precision in conventional and tight naturally fractured reservoirs,” says Stromquist. “And with the ability to circulate leading edge fluids to the perforations, fluids can be managed very well with only what you design going into the formation no waste.” Stephanie Saul, a completions engineer for Penn West Energy Trust, says she has been really happy with the fracs they have been initiating in wells in the company’s Waskada light oil play in southwest Manitoba. She says she likes the flexibility of the Mongoose tool. “If you miss a stage, if you couldn’t get breakdown, you just move up, cut again and get that stage in five metres away,” Saul says. And because the casing runs to the bottom and is cemented in for the full length, “you are only restricted by where the collars are.” The Mongoose system enables the operator to select the depths when the well is being stimulated, she notes. “Instead of drilling and running in with a packer system where your ports are rigidly placed, it’s flexible in that you can pick your depths and the number of stages.” ɸ Page A17

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Partner Drilling could be found near Benson on Jan. 13.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk

Pinpoint placement ɺ Page A16 Nor is there really a limit to the number of stages that can be fractured at one time. Penn West has pumped anywhere from 13 to 40 stages in one run, says Saul. “It’s a very rugged tool.” The Mongoose “does save you a lot of money in monobore completions,” she says. “Often with a ball drop system you have to mill out ports and you don’t have to do that with a monobore.” As well, “you don’t have to bring in equipment to perforate. You are cutting and fracing on the same run so that makes it a lot quicker.” A disadvantage, though, is the need for extra water in cutting through the casing, though this can be mitigated by recycling the

cutting fluid and using it on future cuts, Saul suggests. Although Penn West has been using the Mongoose system for the past year only in horizontal wells, the system can be used in both vertical and horizontal wells. In a vertical well with small pay zones, perhaps only half a metre, it can go in and perforate and then do a test frac (inject pressure fluid down to determine the permeability) and if it is good then do a whole frac, says Getzlaf. The partners did their first well for Nexen Inc. two and a half years ago and “every month has been busier,” mainly due to word-of-mouth. So far this year (up to October, 2010), NCS Energy Services has successfully completed 370 vertical and horizontal wells, mainly in

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Fiberspar moves into new home Debbie Knight, left, and Derek Daku could be seen in Fiberspar’s new Estevan ofÀce and shop in early January. Knight works in administration, while Daku is manager of the company’s Canadian operations.

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By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – The growth has been tremendous for Fiberspar in Canada, explained Derek Daku, who came aboard as its ﬁrst Canadian employee eight years ago. Nearly every year, sales have doubled, he said. Now the company has moved into a new home of its own in Estevan, after setting up a similar shop in Lloydminster. Fiberspar specializes in spoolable, composite pipe made of ﬁbreglass with an epoxy resin. “We installed about

1.4 to 1.5 million feet of pipe in our area,” he said of last year. The company also has operations in Nisku, Alta. Corporate headquarters are in New Bedford, Mass., while manufacturing and operations are out of Houston, Texas. Fiberspar’s new Estevan facility has 6,100 sq.-ft., four bays and an oﬃce area. There are 2.5 acres on site, with an option for more. The building was built on spec by a local developer. The Estevan location comes on the heels of a similar facility set up last year in Lloydminster, where they found property ﬁrst. In Lloydminster a picker truck and highway truck were added, with the intention of bringing trucking in-house. The same plan is in the works for Estevan, where a 45-tonne tridem picker truck, a highway truck and with several trailers are being put into place. In Estevan, Fiberspar had a downtown administration office and handled its operations out of Dayman Trucking’s shop. That’s where they stored their pipe as well. Now it will all be at one location. “I’ve been waiting seven years for this,” Daku said of being all under one roof. ɸ Page A19

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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A new facility considered ɺ Page A18 They will now have their own inventory storage. By vertically integrating the crane and trucking operations, he said, “We don’t have to contract out all our crane usage and truck. The goal is to have it all in one package.” Daku has nothing but praise for Dayman, who will still be called upon as needed. “They’ve helped us out so much,” he said. The new Estevan location will see them adding two to four employees in the near future, bringing the staffing level up to nine. The company likes to keep things uniform, Daku explained, from the way work trucks are set up, to similar equipment at its branches. “We’re trying to keep every district very similar, even the way we set up spools,” he said. Such practices make it easier for employees to fill in between locations if necessary.

Uniformity is not foreign to Daku, who spent three years in the army out of high school before hiring on with SaskEnergy as a gas service technician for 15 years. From there, he joined Fiberspar. Across the 49th The Estevan location services not only the Canadian portion of the Williston Basin, but the American side, too. North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana are supported by the Estevan branch. They have two people working in Williston, with another just recently hired. Eventually the company intends on setting up another full-service location in North Dakota, too. The question lies in where – Williston or Minot? Availability of real estate is the issue, Daku explained. “If you don’t jump on a yard in a day or two, it’s gone,” he said of Williston. Having a fixed location in North Dakota will make things easier, because pipe currently

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has to be sent directly from Houston to the job site. The activity level in North Dakota is going great guns, and anticipated to grow even moreso. Daku cited a Dec. 27 Bismarck Tribune article which noted North Dakota expects to drill 2,000 Bakken-Three Forks wells in 2011, double what was drilled last year and as much as all the total Bakken-Three Forks wells combined to that point. Future plant? Fiberspar is looking at setting up a Canadian manufacturing plant in the future. “I think it will happen within the next year,” Daku said. The driver is cost of transportation. Currently their product is brought out of Houston by truck or rail, with rail being much more efficient for cost. They try to keep enough inventory on hand and replenish it by rail. However, customers sometimes have projects come up on

short notice and need pipe right away, necessitating shipment by truck at much higher cost. Transportation costs are reflected in the price of the product, Daku explained. However, finding labour for such a facility will be a key issue, “without a doubt,” Daku said. The conundrum is to reduce shipping costs, the manufacturing facility should be close to the action. But that means it would also be where labour pressures are most keenly felt.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Acutec launches LEVEL-PRO for wide release Lampman – It can take a long time to ensure a new product is just right and ready for the market. Acutec Systems Ltd. has brought forward two new products, the closely related LEVEL-PRO and POINT-PRO, both of which are tied into its Messenger system that was launched a few years ago. Acutec is a Lampman-based oilfield instrumentation and communications equipment specialist firm, owned by John Grimes. LEVEL-PRO is a tank gauge system. It uses a non-corrosive stainless steel ball float that has a nylon tube passing through it. The float is about the size of a large honeydew melon. The tube is bolted to the top of the tank, and weighted at the bottom, simplifying installation. It makes use of the thief hatch on the top of the tank. The secret sauce, as it were, is the sensor strip within the tube. The strip can detect where the ball is to within millimetre accuracy. The ball floats on the top of the liquid, and the sensor strip determines how high it is. That information is then passed to the one-way satellite communication system known as Messenger. The Messenger is a self-powered telemetry system that is seeing usage with numerous oil and gas companies as well as SaskEnergy and TransGas. The information comes through Acutec’s server

and is web accessible. It will provide alerts such as spill prevention and tank fluid levels at programmed intervals. Operators can access it through the Internet, or via their cellphone. The messages they get come in the form of text messages. “We control all the alarms with this, pump starts and stops. It’s critical to know where the fluid level is,” Grimes explained. Currently, the system only has one float, meaning it can only detect total fluid level. That will change soon, however, adding the ability to detect the oil/water interface as well. “We will have two [floats] this year.” It’s just an issue of software development at this point, Grimes said. The sensor not only determines fluid levels, but also temperature, useful in refined product applications like gasoline and diesel. Accuracy of the product is especially important for refined products, Grimes said. “We’ve got 1 millimetre resolution. It’s really tight,” he said. Grimes claims it is more accurate than radar systems. He should know, since they sell and service radar level gauges and have plenty of experience in that field. It’s also more reliable, he said. They’ve done side-by-side testing, leading him to say, “There’s no comparison.” ɸ Page A21

John Grimes, president of Acutec Systems Ltd., holds a Messenger satellite communications system in his right hand while kneeling beside a POINT-PRO alarm system.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

A21

Tested to ensure you got it right ɺ Page A20 It will reduce service calls, and that’s a good thing. “In the long run, there’s more payoff in lowering the cost of ownership for the customer.” Reducing maintenance needs also means fewer service personnel are needed, an important factor in a tight labour market. Test, test, and test again Grimes is involved with a tank rental company, Southeast Rentals, based in Carlyle, which provides ample testing opportunities. “We’ve done some on our own tanks. It’s a great testing ground. “We’ve been in the field. We started over three years ago, and have been tweaking it since then. Grimes said they have been working on the LEVEL-PRO for “easily five years.” Why so long? “Because that’s what it takes,” he replied. Indeed, initial development on the Messenger and LEVEL-PRO began approximately 10 years ago. They decided to focus on the Messenger first, then complete the LEVEL-PRO. “You prototype, test. If it doesn’t work, you try it again,” said Steve Driedger with Acutec. How many prototypes did they go through? “You could fill a good-sized truck with circuit boards,” Driedger replied. “Once we knew what we needed, it was mostly software,” Grimes added. “You can’t do it in the lab. You have to take it in the field. That’s a given.” Temperature chambers are also used to ensure they could withstand extreme hot and cold. “We’re happy with the product now. It’s come a long ways. Making sure you’re doing this right is our focus.” Initial sales of the LEVEL-PRO began in 2010, similar to a beta test. Now it’s available for wide release. While the LEVEL-PRO is designed for integration with the Messenger, it is compatible with any industry standard level gauge display. It also connects to PLCs and similar equipment. It is designed to handle the tank rental market.

“We wanted it rugged enough for the portable tank market,” Grimes said. POINT-PRO The POINT-PRO is a spin-oﬀ development of the LEVEL-PRO. It uses a tripod to suspend the sensor above a ﬂoor, such as the inside of a secondary containment wall, for instance. It’s 100 per cent independent, self-powered, with satellite communication. It doesn’t need to be wired in, and is good for temporary and permanent sites. Quest A new company has been formed to market the technology outside of Saskatchewan. It’s called The Quest Group. “We have companies interested in licensing the Messenger as well as the LEVELPRO,” Grimes said. There are two parts to The Quest Group: Quest Measurement Inc. deals with tank gauges, while Quest Data Inc. focuses on telemetry, data management and web-hosted service. “We sell direct to customers, or we sell through distributors, or we have private labellers. As for licensing agreements, we’re talking to one worldwide com- Steve Driedger holds up a sensor strip and ball Áoat for Acutec pany this week,” Grimes said. Systems Ltd.’s new LEVEL-PRO tank gauge.

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A22

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Labour limiting factor on rig activity

If there were more skilled people available, even more rigs would be active, according to Ensign Energy Services. Big Sky Rig 37 could be seen near Waskada, Man., last fall.

By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – There would be even more drilling rigs working now, if people could be found to staﬀ them. Pipeline News had a chance to sit down with several senior manager with Ensign Energy Services Inc. on Jan. 12 after the company made a $96,000 donation to

the United Way of Estevan. The big issue facing the drilling company in the southeast is labour, brought on by a housing shortage. “We’re well ahead of last year. We’re up to 78 per cent activity. If we can get to 85 per cent, we’ll be really happy. We could get to 100 per cent if we could ﬁnd

the people,” explained Dave Fyhn, manager of administration with Ensign Energy Services Inc. Ensign has 136 rigs, and “None of those are mothballed,” he said. That’s roughly one-sixth of the Western Canadian drilling ﬂeet of 792 rigs. “We have recruiters working long hours,”

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said Darryl Maser, general manager of Ensign Big Sky Drilling in Oxbow and Ensign Champion Drilling in Brooks, Alta. Both are divisions of Ensign Energy Services. “We have a recruiting centre in Nisku with 16,000 people in the database. We have recruiters active in Nisku, Estevan and Brooks.” Those recruiters track down people right across Canada, he said, going to high schools and trade shows. “We recruit a lot of people from Eastern Canada, but it’s not as proliﬁc as you might expect.” “Between January 1 and breakup, that’s when everyone wants to start up rigs,” Fyhn said. “Big Sky will run 100 per cent this winter,” Maser said. After breakup, both he and Fyhn feel utilization rates will be high.

Big Sky Drilling, operating out of Oxbow, Saskatchewan, has the largest rig Áeet in Saskatchewan. Big Sky Drilling specializes in oil and natural gas drilling in Southeast Saskatchewan and Southwest Manitoba.

Asked if more rigs are needed in southeast Saskatchewan, they point out the fleet has already grown by 20 to 30 rigs, and that it’s at a holding point now. “I think there’s work for more, but everyone realizes there’s not enough people,” said Rick Mann, Big Sky operations manager in Oxbow. South of the border, Ensign now has 11 rigs working in North Dakota and Montana, up from one rig two years ago. They now have a North Dakota office. With the shortage of people, the amount of time spent at each position has been markedly reduced in the industry compared to years past. Most drillers have three to five years experience on rigs now before getting to that position, whereas the standard used to be more than five years. The company has been an active participant in the formalized rig technician programs that have been implemented in Saskatchewan and Alberta. “You can’t sacrifice

safety,” Fyhn said. “Yes, we’re thin. Everybody is promoting through the system. You still need your driller, derrickhand and rig manager to be experienced.” New automated drilling rigs are helping the situation out. Ensign has 78 ADRs in its worldwide ﬂeet of close to 300 rigs, but so far, they aren’t being used in southeast Saskatchewan. Locally, Mann said housing is a “huge issue.” “You talk to someone coming here to work, and have nowhere to put them. South of Weyburn, some of our guys are staying in camps, if they can get in." In southwest Saskatchewan, Champion’s stomping grounds, Meser said Viking drilling in the Kindersley area has been Champion’s biggest boost. Gas drilling is minimal, with operators drilling what they have to to keep their land. “After breakup, hopefully we’ll run 45 to 50 per cent utilization, because the gas market isn’t there,” Meser said. “Thank God for oil,” Fyhn concluded.

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A23

Big donation from Ensign Big Sky By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – The staff at Ensign Big Sky Drilling reached deep into their pockets over the past several months, and the result is just shy of six figures. Big Sky Drilling made a donation of $95,763 to the United Way of Estevan on Jan. 12. Half the money was raised by the drilling company’s staff, the remainder was matched by Ensign. Big Sky Drilling is a division of EnsignEnergy, running 24 drilling rigs and labour contracts for two rigs. It operates out of Oxbow. “I want to give a heartfelt thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” said Trobert. Trobert recounted how Ensign had approached the United Way with the intention of making a contribution, but they would not make it in time for the annual telethon fundraiser. The idea was to duplicate the success Ensign had had in Brooks and Calgary. The concept started in Brooks 10 years ago, where it has raised over $1 million over the years. Fyhn explained, “We’ve been monumental supporters of the United Way for many years. This year, Ensign has put up $150,000 in a matching program for all divisions.” Calgary had raised $60,000, while Brooks’ Champion Drilling brought in $37,000. Oxbow’s Big Sky Drilling brought in a whopping $48,000.

“It was huge. We didn’t expect anything like this,” he said. Getting the rigs involved was the key, with competition between the rigs to see who could raise the most money. Big Sky operations manager Rick Mann said, “We went out to some of our supply companies and asked them to donate prizes.” Fast Trucking and Circle “D” Transport each donated a 60 inch TV. Chandel Equipment Rentals, another division of Ensign, but not one directly taking part in the challenge, put forward a gas-powered remote control vehicle. Apex Distribution, Accurate Oilfield Supply, Shaw Enterprises and Guardian together donated 21 Garmin GPS units with OilTrax mapping software. Rock Weld Oilfield Services put up two iPads. “That’s what made it fly,” Mann said. “The rig that made the most all got GPSs. Nearly all their rigs took part. “One rig raised $10,000. I was hoping to get that number from everything,” Mann explained. The $10,000 came from Rig 48, under rig manager Landon Pillar. Rig 4, run by Wayne Kolb, came in second at $5,500. Quite a few rigs came in around the same level. There were no bake sales or barbecues. The money primarily came out of the employees’ pockets, although a swear

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James Trobert, president of the United Way of Estevan, left, accepts a $95,763 donation from Ensign Big Sky Drilling on Jan. 12. To the right of him are Darryl Maser, general manager of Ensign Big Sky, Rick Mann, operations manager, and Dave Fyhn, manager of administration and chair of the United Way campaign for all the companies within the Ensign group.

jar in the Oxbow office did raise $226, part of the office’s $3,108 contribution. With the matching contribution, the total donation of $95,763 brought the United Way of Estevan’s 2010 campaign total to $459,705. Maser said, “Our plan is to be bigger next year,” adding that they would likely bring other Ensign divisions in the region in on the fundraising effort.

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A24

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Five and a half years on -

Eagle Drilling Services sells for $78 million By Brian Zinchuk Carlyle – In June of 2010, Eagle Drilling

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Eagle Drilling Services has made a custom of awarding a rebuilt classic car to its employees of the year. In front of the cars at last summer’s 5th anniversary are company general manager and president Derrick Big Eagle, in the white shirt, and company chair Robert MacCuish. MacCuish and Big Eagle have been the company’s largest shareholders, in that order, with a combined total of 42 per cent ownership before the acquisition by CanElson. File photo

for the next phase, as the company signed a deal on Jan. 14 with CanElson Drilling Inc. of Calgary to sell Eagle Drilling for $78 million. The deal was set to close on or about Jan. 28, after this edition went to press. The purchase marks the second acquisition of a drilling company in southeast Saskatchewan by CanElson in less than eight months. Around the time Eagle was celebrating its ﬁfth anniversary, CanElson was putting the ﬁnishing touches on its acqui-

sition of Totem Drilling of Carnduff. The result will be a fleet of 14 rigs in southeast Saskatchewan, three of which are brand new. It also means it moves both Eagle and the former Totem up a notch when it comes to drilling company size, allowing them to go after bigger fish as a combined entity with CanElson. And like the Totem deal, it may technically be an acquisition, but it reads more like a merger. According to the CanElson press release, under the terms of a pre-acquisition

agreement with Eagle, CanElson has agreed to make an oﬀer to acquire all of Eagle’s outstanding common shares for total consideration of approximately $61 million (plus the assumption of debt of approximately $17.1 million), consisting of cash and the issuance of common shares of CanElson for a total purchase price of approximately $78 million. The preacquisition agreement provides for a break fee of $2.5 million payable by Eagle to CanElson under certain circumstances. ɸ Page A26

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Operations to consolidate at Carlyle ɺ Page A24 Pursuant to the oﬀer, Eagle shareholders will receive $20 million of cash consideration and approximately $41 million of CanElson shares at a deemed price of $4.15 per share. Five per cent of the CanElson Shares received by Eagle shareholders will be free trading upon issuance, 33.33 per cent are subject to a resale restriction of four months, 33.33 per cent are subject to an eight month resale restriction and the remainder are subject to a one year resale restriction. In the deal, CanElson will acquire eight fully crewed, modern, heavy duty, telescopic double rigs (ratings of 3500 metres vertically, 4300 metres horizontally); positive working capital estimated at $6 million; land and buildings with an estimated val-

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ue of $3.5 million; and rental and ancillary equipment with an estimated value of $3.5 million, which equates to a purchase price per rig of approximately $8.1 million. It is expected that key employees and management of Eagle will be retained and continue with CanElson. By the end of first quarter of 2011, and including the closing of the acquisition, CanElson will operate a combined rig fleet of 27 (net 23) rigs which includes 18 drilling rigs in Western Canada, five (net four) drilling rigs in the Permian Basin west Texas, two (net one) sub-contracted drilling rigs in Mexico and two (net one) service rigs in Mexico. Both the Eagle and Totem deals allowed for shareholders to gain liquidity with their holdings by becoming part of a publicly traded company. Eagle had 48 shareholders, according to Derrick Big Eagle, president and general manager. He and MacCuish combined held 42 per cent, with MacCuish being the largest shareholder. Genesis of deal Big Eagle told Pipeline News how the deal came about. He and Mike Smith, vice-president of operations for Saskatchewan with CanElson and a longtime acquaintance, met in later October of last year. “They had offered to buy in the spring,” Big Eagle recalled. “Once we got the eight rigs proposed and built, there was a little more interest.” Randy Hawkings, CEO of CanElson, said, “We had chatted with them for some time.” “Both companies had a strong focus on the men. The moment became right. We were fortunate,” Hawkings said. “We really like the company he’s built, the quality of his people, his rigs,” Hawkings said of Big Eagle. They also had the same management philosophies, calling it “an alignment of values.” Eagle Drilling had looked at going public themselves. By becoming part of an already-publicly traded company, it would spare them the complexity of doing an IPO. “In a way, it’s a liquidity event for the shareholders to get publicly traded shares,” Hawkings said. CanElson is listed on the TSX Venture exchange. “I still will be working here,” Big Eagle said, although what exactly his role would be had not been decided. Smith would be looking after Saskatchewan operations. “I might be the head bottle washer yet.” Big Eagle said he has worked with Smith in the

past, and they make a great team. They were raised on the same style of rigs, and think alike. “To be the dominant player in southeast Saskatchewan, this is the perfect match,” he said. “This was sort of the next stage for the whole thing. This was the time to do it. Drilling companies are in the spotlight right now, especially in oilweighted areas.” The strategic timing will maximize shareholder value, he added. By being part of a public company, it also allows staff to take part in stock-based compensation. “We’d like everybody to be a shareholder,” Hawkings said, noting that after a period of time, employees can participate in a share purchase plan. With international operations, there will be more opportunities to move around within the company. While they have rigs in Mexico and West Texas already, they’ve been eyeing up North Dakota. “Is North Dakota a possibility? Yes, it is.” Having 14 rigs in the region means they will be able to go after bigger customers, Big Eagle said. “Your strength is always in numbers. “We will be able to help out bigger oil companies who need more rigs.” “We’re still going to be the guy on the corner, but it’s still on a personal basis.” Consolidation of operations CanElson now has two operations bases in southeast Saskatchewan, Carlyle and Carnduff, for its 14 rigs. Big Eagle said the plan is to move operations to Carlyle for all 14 rigs. “That would be the plan,” Hawkings confirmed. “It’s hard to have bases in two different places.” It’s a strategic position, right in the centre of the oil industry, Big Eagle said. The timing for that move, however, is not set yet. Community involvement Eagle Drilling Services has been highly visible in the southeast, and Hawking said he really liked Big Eagle’s involvement with the community. That’s a very important part of any business, he said. Hawkings would also like Big Eagle to stay on. “We’d like him to continue doing what he’s done. Hopefully it’s a long term relationship, hopefully forever.” As for MacCuish, Hawkings said, “We are hoping that Rob MacCuish will act as an adviser to us post-transaction.”

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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Aaron Well Servicing adds fourth rig Weyburn – Aaron Well Servicing Ltd. of Weyburn added their fourth service rig in December 2010, just in time to cash in on strong demand for service rigs during the winter months. “The ﬁrst rig went to work in April 2007, but the company was formed in July 2006, said Aaron Cugnet, president and general manager. The intervening time was spent

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formalizing the company and building their ﬁrst rig. Aaron Cugnet heads up the company with vice-president and cousin Wes Cugnet. Wes, 47, and Aaron, 32, had both started working on rigs right after high school. Asked what was the impetus behind starting the company, Aaron said, “It’s something Wes and I had been throwing

around for quite a few years, he, even longer.” Noting there was a lot of demand, they decided to “give it a whirl.” “I had worked for someone else in the very early stages of the Bakken, and could see what was coming down the pipeline,” Aaron said. There would be demand not only for more rigs, but the newer, heavier type, he said. ɸ Page A28

Workovers & Completions

“Locally Owned & Operated” Aaron Cugnet heads up Aaron Well Servicing of Weyburn. Here he could be seen with the company’s newest rig, working near the U.S. border.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

New home for Aaron Well Servicing

Derickhand Lyndon Olson gets a breather from his skyward duties.

ɺ Page A27 Aaron was a rig manager with Miller Well Servicing before embarking on their venture. He now has 14 years experience on rigs. Wes started in the 1980s, and has worked for a variety of companies, including on drilling rigs. “Wes wasn’t working in service rigs at the time. He was peddling drill bits,” Aaron said of Wes when they started the company. Wes is currently a service rig consultant when he’s not acting as vice-president of Aaron Well Servicing. The timing has worked out well for the company. The start-up years were very strong in the industry. Rig 2 went to work in April 2008, and Rig 3 joined in April 2009, when the price of oil was near a low point. However, “It went right to work, and never missed a beat,” Aaron said. Now, with the fourth rig coming into play, demand has seldom been stronger. “You haven’t seen nothing yet, unless people buy or move rigs,” Aaron said. “January, February, March – you’re going to see peaks you haven’t seen,” he said of the activity

level. “I expect the first quarter of 2011 to be as busy as it can be,” he said, citing new company budgets and the spring breakup deadline as major drivers.” In December, utilization rates for service rigs in Saskatchewan were nearly 80 per cent. On January 17, 79 per cent of the Saskatchewan fleet was in action. The sector is working at near-capacity, with scarcity of labour being a major factor. The company has 23 employees, including management. “It’s a day-to-day thing, really. The men we have are all good men,” he said of finding workers for their new rig. When it came time to crew up the fourth rig, they largely promoted from within, but finding people to take up the lower positions is harder all the time. “I’m still finding them,” he said on Jan. 3. “The biggest holdback is labour. Things are great today, but the oilpatch goes on and off like a light switch. Wake up tomorrow and the world can change. We’re trying not to sacrifice quality for quantity.” Aaron calls their approach “cautiously aggressive.” “Knowing this rig was coming, we brought in guys beforehand and started training them.” Most of their employees are from Weyburn and surrounding area, or have moved there. Housing for workers, as with most businesses in the region, is a factor. “I get lots of phone calls from Alberta, British Columbia, all over the country. The first question I ask is, ‘Where are you going to stay?’ “We try to stick with the local guys. If he’s willing to move here, we’ll give him a try. We don’t want guys living out of a suitcase in a hotel,” Aaron explained, adding that for people in that situation, they are liable to pull the plug and go elsewhere at a moment’s notice, leaving them hanging. ɸ Page A29

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

A29

Aaron Rig 4 a double-double ɺ Page A28 Something diﬀerent Rigs 1, 2 and 3 are all the same design, higher capacity 104-ft. tripledoubles. They can pull three joints of rod or two joints of tubing. “With Rig 4, we went with a 98-ft. double-double,” Aaron said. “It still has most of the deep hole capabilities of the ﬁrst three rigs, but is more user-friendly for production work. We’re trying to get the best of

both worlds.” All four rigs have been produced by Global Rig in Leduc, Alta. The ﬁrst three rigs work exclusively for Crescent Point Energy, while the fourth is exclusive with Legacy Oil and Gas. Both have their operations oﬃces for southeast Saskatchewan based in Weyburn. New digs In the second half of 2010, Aaron Well Servicing moved into a new

home. Previously, Aaron said a lot of work was done at his home and in his truck. “I had a little rental space on 12th Street in Weyburn – a desk and a garage.” They bought an older building that has seen many uses over the years, from National Oilwell to farm equipment dealers. In the fall, the staﬀ could be seen putting new tin on the exterior. The interior had been largely redone, thanks to the prior

tenant, another service rig company. “We cleaned up the back shop portion, retinned the entire outside, and put some new windows in.” Although the new home is substantially larger than their old location, it’s still not big enough to ﬁt a service rig in. “In the future we’re planning on possibly another shop right behind it,” he said. “Everything but the rig can ﬁt in the shop.”

Three typical types of completions for service rigs There are three types of completions Aaron Wells Servicing usually see, according to company president and general manager Aaron Cugnet. The ﬁrst is the standard, unfracked completion. Their service rigs will clean up after the drilling rig, run production tubing and rods, and then produce the well. The second style has the service rig run the liner, whatever style of frac liner is chosen. The third is where they come to the well postfrac. They come back after either a service rig or the drilling rig runs the liner, remove the frac

string and run production equipment. This sometimes involves drilling out the ball seats on the inside of the liners, typically using mud motors. “The trend is to the post-frac side of things where the drilling rig has run the liner oﬀ the bat,” Cugnet said. That methodology has become more prevalent over the last six months to a year. If there is pressure on drilling rigs to get more wells drilled as opposed to spending time on installing liners, liner installation may shift back to service rigs, he noted.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Rallyemont delineating Prince property Prince – Rallyemont Energy Inc. announced Jan. 6 that it has raised gross proceeds of $10.1 million through its brokered and non-brokered oﬀering in December 2010. Of the total funds raised, approximately 66 per cent were on a ﬂow through basis. As of December 31, 2010, the company had a net working capital of $10.5 million, which will be deployed primarily towards delineation drilling in the Prince focus area, initial development engineer-

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ing and baseline environmental studies for a commercial SAGD project in the Prince focus area, and ongoing exploration work. Prince is approximately 23 kilometres north of North Battleford. Rallyemont is a private Saskatchewan heavy oil company based in Saskatoon. In its first year of existence, Rallyemont acquired over 52 sections of heavy oil mineral rights in west central Saskatchewan, which contain roughly 150 historic drill holes in and around the property. Operational update Rallyemont announced that it has successfully acquired approximately 14 square miles of 3D seismic in the Prince focus area during its November 2010 acquisition program, which was completed by RPS Boyd PetroSearch. The information gathered was of excellent quality and confirmed and further expanded the over 66 kilometres of 2D seismic acquired earlier in the year. The initial interpretation has been completed and based on this, 15 drilling locations have been selected for the infill drill program which was to start in January. Estimated costs for the entire infill drill program are approximately $3.5 million.

Of those 15 locations, approximately six are expected to be cored, with the remainder being strat wells, according to Rallyemont president and CEO Corey Giasson. The drilling started in January, and was expected to be completed before breakup. Each of the shallow holes was anticipated to take approximately 2.5 to three days to drill. Rallyemont has also commenced initial engineering work for a 5,000 to 10,000 barrel per day of capacity SAGD plant in the Prince focus area. The company has engaged BAR Engineering Co. Ltd. of Lloydminster to complete an initial scoping study. “BAR has a tremendous amount of experience with thermal oil projects. They’ve been involved with other Saskatchewan heavy oil thermal projects such as Husky’s Pikes Peak thermal project, Husky’s Bolney Celtic SAGD project, and Southern Pacific’s Senlac SAGD project,” the company noted in a release. Rallyemont has also engaged MDH Engineered Solutions Ltd. based out of Saskatoon to complete baseline environment work. MDH is an environmental and geotechnical ﬁrm.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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B-Section

PIPELINE NEWS

February 2011

Saskatchewan’s Petroleum Monthly

Trican continues to boost its fracturing horsepower

Dozens of specialized fracturing vehicles were used for a frac job for Pengrowth.Trican had 256,000 fracking horsepower in Canada by year-end 2010. Photo Submitted by Trican Well Service

By Geoﬀ Lee Calgary – Trican Well Service is riding the crest of strong demand for its completion services led by growth in the fracturing side of the business in Western Canada. The 2011 capital budget for its Canadian operations includes $104 million for an additional 62,500 fracturing horsepower, four nitrogen pumpers, ﬁve twin cement pumpers and two acid pumpers. The 2011 capital budget is a continuation of strong growth for Trican in 2010 as customer demand for fracking in oil and liquids rich plays gains momentum.

“The fracturing side has really grown with the last couple of years,” said Rob Cox, vice-president, Canadian Geographic Region. “It has been a booming area for us and all service providers in the pressure pumping market. “It has to do with diﬀerent factors – one factor being the rebound of oil prices relative to natural gas prices,” he said. “The other is horizontal drilling. Horizontal drilling and horizontal drilling completion techniques have improved signiﬁcantly over the last couple of years. “If you go back to 2005 or 2006, under 10 per cent of the wells drilled were horizontal wells and those wells would be been fracked three or four times. ɸ Page B2

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Big increase in horizontals

A Trican employee assists with a burst port system installation for Husky near Richlea, Sk. Photo submitted.

Éş Page B1 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Starting with 2010 and going into 2011, the estimate is somewhere between 40 and 50 per cent of the wells drilled would be horizontals. A lot of them will be fracked up to 15 to 20 times.â&#x20AC;? Trican is the largest pressure pumping service provider in Canada, and also provides the sand, the ďŹ&#x201A;uid systems used to conduct the frac, and all of the associated equipment and product. Internationally, Trican is the largest fracturing company in Russia, with growing operations in the United States, Kazakhstan and Algeria. In Western Canada, Trican is experiencing strong customer demand in conventional and unconventional oil and liquids rich plays with the Estevan area being the hotspot in Saskatchewan.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Estevan area has been very active in all services including cementing, acidizing and fracturing,â&#x20AC;? said Cox. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are also seeing activity extending eastward into Manitoba. The Bakken play is one of the main plays being chased.â&#x20AC;? In Alberta, demand for Tricanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s services is keeping pace with the renewed interest in drilling in the Cardium formation in the Drayton Valley/Whitecourt corridor. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economically viable to drill a horizontal well in these formations now because the drilling is faster, the completion techniques are more reliable, and you have more options for completions,â&#x20AC;? said Cox. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That allows you to access a lot more of the wellbore out of a single well. The infrastructure cost and the number of equivalent wellbores that you get is low on a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;per equivalent wellboreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; basis.â&#x20AC;? Trican originated as a privately owned cementing company in 1979 in Lloydminster where it continues to provides cementing and acidizing services to the heavy oil market. The Lloydminster base has four cementers and four bulkers or pressure pumping units. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a lot of fracking that happens in the Lloydminster area because heavy oil formations donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t respond to fracturing treatments as well as some of the harder and consolidated rock,â&#x20AC;? explained Cox. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see a whole onslaught of fracturing activity in Lloydminster. With the price of oil being high, heavy oil is still attractive. There is a lot more drilling ahead in 2011 and 2012 than we would have seen in 2008 and â&#x20AC;&#x2122;09. Cox ďŹ&#x201A;ew into Lloydminster and Estevan a few days after the Pipeline News interview from Calgary as part of Tricanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s annual â&#x20AC;&#x153;safety stand downâ&#x20AC;? exercise. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Every year for the ďŹ rst couple of weeks in January, we travel to every base and we meet with our employees in the ďŹ eld and reinforce the fact safety is No. 1, and that if the job isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t safety, we wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do it,â&#x20AC;? said Cox. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Essentially, we reinforce that fact we need a safe operation and no amount of money is worth an injury. The same day, we go to Estevan and then to Red Deer, Drumheller and Brooks.â&#x20AC;? Looking ahead, Cox says a new play that is already getting Tricanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention is the Duvernay area in the Whitecourt, Hinton and Edson corridor of Alberta. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a shale that provides a wet gas or an oily gas so thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot of liquids,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That is just starting to develop, and I see pretty good activity coming through there.â&#x20AC;? Cox says there is almost as much fracking with gas as there is in the oil business, but oil has dominated Tricanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s service business in recent years. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If we were having this conversation three years ago, I would say our meat and potatos was gas,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;About 75 per cent of the work we would have done then was gas related. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now, I would say about 60 per cent of the work we do is oil. Of the 40 per cent thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gas, half of that is gas that contains liquid â&#x20AC;&#x201C; wet gas.â&#x20AC;? Cox says natural gas prices will have to increase before the Horn River shale gas play of north-eastern British Columbia becomes active again. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still going to be some healthy activity up there in 2011 and 2012,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gas prices are in the low $3 to mid $3s right now. A lot of our operators are telling us right now that prices will have to get to $5 and above before they are going to see a lot of increased activity.â&#x20AC;? Asked if there were any new fracking materials on the market to keep pace with new horizontal drilling techniques, Cox said â&#x20AC;&#x153;materials change on an ongoing basis as you make improvementsâ&#x20AC;? but there are not many game changers on the market. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Some of the ďŹ&#x201A;uids have changed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; some new sands and harder sands for some of the deeper rocks,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For the most part, the equipment is very similar to where it was ďŹ ve to 10 years ago. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a lot of more of it is needed.â&#x20AC;?

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Fracking taking over Trican's R&D

Grant Farion, technical specialist, international operators, and Amanda Cossette, base administrator, work on Àltering a sample at Trican’s R&D Centre. Photo submitted

Calgary – Trican Well Service continues to crack the frac in the booming horizontal oil and gas well market in Western Canada with its research and development of new products and processes that boost production for customers.

“What we are trying to do is develop products that make it easier for oil and gas companies to produce oil and gas,” said Dave Browne, corporate director of technology for Trican’s Research and Development Centre in Calgary. “We develop a lot

of hydraulic fracturing products, and we are also developing a lot of cement products along with acidizing and solvent solutions for well stimulations.” Trican has developed more than 60 new cementing and stimulation products, and 18 coiled

tubing products over the last three years to position itself as Canada’s largest pressure pumping service provider. There are about 40 employees at the R and D Centre that houses Trican’s Stimulation and Cement laboratories as well as the Coiled Tubing tool development facilities. “Fracking is taking over the majority of the R and D,” said Browne, who added that’s his specialty too. "There is a lot of work to be done, and we think there are going to be a lot of new products developed in the next ﬁve years.” New horizontal fracturing methods such as continuous multi-zone fracturing, foam fracturing with nitrogen and CO2 and coiled tubing fracturing have led Trican to develop a growing list of fracking solutions for conventional and unconventional oil and gas applications. FlowRider is one of

Trican’s newest and most promising products that Browne thinks could be “a game changer” for new slick water fracturing treatments in unconventional shale gas formations. “I wouldn’t say we are using it extensively yet, but every month we get a couple more jobs and we are gathering more data,” said Browne. “We would love to ﬁnd oil and gas company to do a project with us to compare with and without FlowRider to

prove it works – maybe do 10 wells with it and 10 wells without it.” With FlowRider, slick water treatments can carry proppant (sand or ceramic) into the formation without the use of viscosiﬁers (thickeners) required with conventional fracturing operations. “It’s going to increase production by making it far more eﬃcient to get your sand proppant (frac materials) into the formation to stimulate the reservoir,” Browne said. ɸ Page B4

Cordell Janssen District Manager Downhole

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

'Breaker Technology' ɺ Page B3 “What normally happens with slick water fracturing – the slurry of slick water and proppant is pumped down the casing and into the fracture that you’ve created. Turbulent flow easily carries all the sand down the well. “Once it gets into the formation, there’s going to be areas where the turbulence is going to be lower and the sand will just fall to the bottom of the fracture, so you get this big pile at the bottom of the fracture and no sand at the end of the fracture or up higher in the reservoir. “By adding FlowRider, you are able to transport the proppant further into the reservoir and distribute it more evenly and vertically in the fracture,” Browne said. Trican has developed an environmentally friendly slick water fracturing fluid called EcoClean designed to protect water wells and aquifers during treatments of shallow gas reservoirs. EcoClean passes the Microtox test used to determine if water is safe for drinking, and that applies to each of the additives in EcoClean, individually or in combination. “Slick water frac fluids are different for each of the reservoirs you are pumping into,” said Browne. “Some reservoirs require more additives than others. If you don’t have a scale problem, for example, you don’t need a scale inhibitor. “Sometimes there is a clay control. It’s an additive that stops the water from affecting the natural clays that occur in the shale. We have an environmentally friendly clay control that we add. “We have about five additives that whether combined or used separately are environmentally friendly and can pass the Microtox test,” he said. One of those additives is what Trican calls its “Breaker Technology.” Breakers are chemicals that are added to frac fluids in order to reduce their viscosity after treatment has been completed. This enables fluids to flow back and remove unwanted gel from the proppant solution. “It’s an environmentally friendly breaker,” said Browne. “One of the areas we are working on is conventional hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells. “We need to pump in viscous fluids during a conventional frac. There are a lot of polymers needed to make the fluids viscous, and they leave residue in the reservoir. “Breakers break down these polymers so they can flow out with the water. The more you get to flow out, the higher your production will be.” Trican has been at the forefront of many technological innovations in horizontal fracturing in the past few years, most notably with its Burst Port System

WATER

ENERGY

RECOVERY

Trican Well Service operates its own R&D centre in Calgary. Photo submitted

for selective fracturing. BPS has made drilling horizontal wells into low quality reservoirs more economic by allowing for quicker targeted fracturing. With BPS, the casing collars containing pre-milled ports are placed into the horizontal well casing or liner string, and are straddled by Trican’s selective stimulation tool run on coiled tubing. The BPS collar is pressured up causing the ports to burst at their designated pressure points, allowing the fracture to be pumped into the targeted zone. “Usually, you start at the toe of the well and you place a frac treatment there,” said Browne. “Then, you move maybe 75-metres toward the heel and perform another frac. You do that all along the 1,000 or 1,500-m horizontal section. “It enables you to eﬃciently and easily do these fracs. These reservoirs that we are drilling into are low quality. They don’t give you a lot of oil or gas unless you drill this long horizontal and put all these fracs into it. “All of a sudden you have enough oil to make drilling the well worthwhile. You have to look at the economics of putting your pump on the well and operating the pump. If you don’t get enough oil to pay for that, then it’s uneconomic. “When we were drilling vertical wells and fracking them they weren’t economic – because the reservoir is of poor quality,” Browne said. “With these horizontal wells and these new techniques like the BPS and new frac ﬂuids, we are now able to drill into poor or lower quality reservoirs and make it economic. “We have all these little incremental steps as we go along, making it more and more economic,” he said.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

SSEER seeks businesses’ concerns Estevan – Saskatchewan South East Enterprise Region (SSEER) has been making an effort to talk to individual businesses in the region and find out what their concerns are. By late December, they had 79 meetings in the northern block of the region, all oilpatch related, enough to provide some preliminary results. In January the plan was to tackle Kisbey, Arcola, Carlyle and Redvers. They intended on following up with another 88 companies in the northern block that didn’t have time to speak with them the first time

around. From the beginning of February to the end of March, they will tackle the southern portion of the region. Co-operation has been fantastic, they report. “They know exactly what they want to say to you,” said James Tessier, who has been working on the project for SSEER. “They’ll want you to know everything, and really understand.” He reported the businesses they spoke to are operating at capacity. “They’re at break-neck speed.”

Baytex acquires heavy oil Calgary – Baytex Energy Corp. has boosted its heavy oil assets in the Seal area of northern Alberta and the Lloydminster area of western Saskatchewan with a $156.5 million acquisition of Calgary-based junior Prosper Petroleum. The acquisition of Prosper and its privately owned leases on Jan. 14 adds approximately 2,600 barrels of oil per day to Baytex and raises its 2011 production forecast to 49,000 boed. “The acquisition provides additional development opportunities in the Seal area where we already possess signiﬁcant leasehold and operating infrastructure,” said chief executive ofﬁcer Anthony Marino in

a news release from the Baytex head oﬃce in Calgary. Approximately 65 per cent of the new production will come from Seal in the Peace River area with the remainder from Lloydminster. The acquisition will increase Baytex’s

holdings at Seal to approximately 63,000 net hectares of undeveloped land. The assets acquired at Seal are viewed by Baytex as opportunities for cold multi-lateral horizontal development. The acquired Lloydminster assets add ap-

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For example, there is a need for technicians, swampers and steam truck drivers; indeed, any kind of skilled labour. “We’re hearing about labour,” Tessier said. Meagan Nicholas, who is also working on the study, said, “It is an all around shortage.” She added businesses have told them the work ethic is not the same as 10 years ago, either. Expectations are different, and employees are more prone to jumping ship on a phone call, seeking better pay. “There seems to be a wage war going on for local people who have housing, stealing each other’s employees,” said Edie Spagrud, CEO of SSEER. Tessier said businesses cannot expand because they cannot find additional staff. A lot of communities are losing support businesses for oil and gas, because people are retiring and simply shutting down, instead of selling their businesses to another person. Ten of the 79 businesses interviewed identified that as an issue.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

TS&M’s Estevan expansion makes room for three divisions

A load of Àbreglass pipe recently came in from the cold. Fibreglass and sucker rods have been key growth areas for TS&M in Estevan, necessitating the new shop for the Àbreglass division.

Estevan – Last summer, TS&M’s Estevan location got some additional breathing room.

Soon, they may need some more. An old building was demolished, and a new,

larger one was put in its place. It is now home to the ﬁbreglass, multiplex and automation divi-

sions. TS&M is a division of NOV. “We originally had

Southern Bolt and our fibreglass division sharing an old Quonset,” said Dan Pratt, branch manager. The oldest part was demolished, and the rear part of the building was moved to the back of the yard for temporary usage. It has since been removed upon the completion of the new shop. The fibreglass division hands fibreglass pipe and fittings. Multiplex looks after water disposal pumps. The new facility allowed for the establishment of an automation division in 2010. A line of variable frequency drives can be seen in the back. They also carry rod pump controllers. The multiplex division can now fabricate pump packages right in

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the shop. They also service old pumps. The building is 80 x 140 ft. in size, with two storeys of offices in the front. Pratt said construction was done in reasonable time given the wet weather and high water table. “We had more people already. We needed space for more products and more office space. The company’s grown quite a bit in the last three to four years,” he said. “It basically allows us to better service our customers.” Fibreglass and sucker rods have seen the largest growth locally, he added, attributing it to the increased drilling in the region. “We have 75 employees in Estevan. We’re always looking for good people,” he said. However, housing for prospective employees is problematic. “Getting people to move from out of town is a huge issue,” he said. They get resumes from Ontario, and the Maritimes; people willing to come, but can’t find someplace they can afford to live. “I’ve had people in the door, sit down, do interviews. Things look promising, but they just can’t afford to move out here.” There is a high demand for product as well. Pratt said manufacturers are not able to keep up with demand in the area, and it’s a daily battle to procure parts and fittings to keep customers working in the field. It’s the busiest he’s seen since he’s been with the company, and is comparable to 2008. That said, the last two years were busy for TS&M in Estevan as well. As for future growth, Pratt said, “Oh yeah. We’re looking in the relatively near future at expanding. “TS&M has been a member of the business community in Estevan closing in on 40 years, in the good and the bad. Expect to see our footprint in the region continue to grow, as well as in the community.”

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

What a difference a year makes Shif ting Gears

One Woman’s Perspective on Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Land Locations By Nadine Elson “An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow.” -Author Unknown My daughter and her husband celebrated their ﬁrst wedding anniversary in September. My husband celebrated his 20 year work anniversary at Sask Power in December. My friend and general manager of Southern Plains Co-operative, Bob Declercq, recently retired after 35 years. He had spent the last 19 years of his career in Estevan, with the last 12 of those years with me as one of the directors on the board. The Boss and his wife also celebrated an anniversary recently. They marked 15 years of wedded bliss with fun in the sun- a warm Mexican holiday at the beginning of cold January. I helped the pair celebrate. I took his cell phone away from him on January 1, as they were leaving, with strict instructions for him not to call while on holiday. My anniversary was also this past month. It has been one year since the Boss recruited me to come and

W O N

work with him as his part-time driver in his fledgling hot shot company. I celebrated our one year work anniversary by taking the Boss out to breakfast. Okay, it was really a safety meeting, and I did use his company Visa card to pay, but it was my idea! The fact that his hot shot business had really grown was reflected in the fact that I had gone from working 40 part-time hours in all of January a year ago to working more than 40 hours in the first four days of this January. The Dodge Ram 4500 had gone from being the spare truck parked out of town last year, to being “my” truck parked outside my house. In addition, the fleet has grown. A year ago, he had two trucks and one trailer, now he has three trucks and three trailers. I expect there will be shortly a “new” truck added to the fleet. The local dealership called and they have acquired the perfect truck for him, or so the sales pitch goes. Last January, the workforce consisted of the Boss and me; now it is the Boss and me and two parttime drivers. Our work relationship, like any relationship, has grown and changed over the course of the past year. I think the biggest issue for us both was the issue of trust. Trust had to learned and earned on both our parts. He now trusts that I will do the job well. He trusts that

I am resourceful to get myself out of any predicaments that I may encounter. He trusts that I am an asset to his business building up the clientele and promoting the business whenever and wherever I can, because of my performance over the last year. I trust that he will protect me in terms of the good equipment and tools he buys, how he services the equipment, and his overall safety stance. I trust that he will, in all ways, be respectful to me and about me. I completely trust him in what he says because I have witnessed that he is a man of his word in all respects. Dwight D. Eisenhower, five-star general and former US President, once said, “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionable integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” They say that familiarity breeds contempt. In my case, familiarity has bred respect, as I have nothing but respect for the Boss’s unquestionable integrity and for how he conducts his business and family affairs. So I raise my coffee cup to us - Happy Anniversary! Nadine lives in Estevan, SK with her husband and family. Her mission, beyond delivering the goods quickly, is to have every interaction be a positive one. Smiles are free. She can be reached at missiondriver@hotmail.ca

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Penta Completions is expanding

Yvonne Sever, right, assists the loading of rods onto a gooseneck trailer for a waiting hot shot. Shipper/receiver Taylor Almond operates the forklift. Both work for Penta Completions in Estevan

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Estevan – Penta Completions in Estevan is going to be doing some completions of its own soon, but of a different variety than their norm. “We do only downhole rod pumping applications,” said Lyle Haukeness, manager of the Estevan location. The company, which specialize in rods, will be adding a 25 x 60-ft. oﬃce onto its existing building, replacing the old oﬃce trailer that is currently in use. “We’re just too cramped. We’re looking at getting more yard space, too,” said Haukeness. The new space will allow room for a classroom. “We put on lunch and learns and courses for operators,” he explained. Renting meeting rooms in Estevan has become harder and harder, plus it will be more convenient to do these sessions in their own facility. “We’re hoping to do

it after breakup,” Haukeness said of the expansion. They are looking at prefab construction to minimize downtime. “I’ll be glad to get a bigger office.” Penta Completions has four employees in Estevan right now, and is in the process of hiring a fifth. They are looking for still more, but, like for every other business Pipeline News spoke to in Estevan in January, the lack of affordable housing is a factor. “We just lost someone. She was from Lloydminster, and could not find a residence.” “There’s a lot of demand for skilled people. Everybody battles turnover,” he said. The big driver for growth in the business is the success of the Bakken oil play and $90 per barrel oil. They’re going flat out, with someone on call seven days a week. They are getting calls on those extra days, too.

Lyle Haukeness is glad to be getting a new ofÀce facility soon. Haukeness is the manager of the Estevan location of Penta Completions.

Rod specialists “We’re the only Canadian company who deals solely in the design, sale and service of sucker rods and related equipment,” Haukeness said. “We are rod pumping specialists. That’s all we do.”

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Related work includes some surface wellhead equipment like BOPS, stuffing boxes, polish rods and flow-tees. “Rod pumping is 85 to 90 per cent of the demand in this region,” he said. Rods are all designed to API standards. Penta carries three varieties: high strength and Grade D steel rods in 25-ft. lengths, and 36.5ft. long fibreglass rods. Fibreglass rods are lighter, meaning you can do the same amount of work with a smaller pumping unit. They also have the benefit of “rod stretch.” It’s almost like having a weight hanging on a bungee cord. When you pull up on it, you get a bit of a boost due to the elasticity of the fibreglass. “You get more work out of a fibreglass string,” he said. It’s also corrosion resistant. When fibreglass installations are done, Penta is typically on site. Proper torque is critical, he noted. “We do S-rod predictive programming,” Haukeness said. It’s a program that allows them to optimize the rod string for the particular well. “We get the deviation survey from the company, and I’ll design a pumping system for them,” he said. It provides inclination and azimuth. ɸ Page B9

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Rod pumping specialists Fibreglass rods are not only lighter, but have more elasticity than steel rods.

ɺ Page B8 That system may have X metres of 7/8inch rod, and Y metres of 3/4-inch rod. Sinker bar is used right above the kick oﬀ point, providing weight to drive the rod string through

the deviated section of the well. Guides, plastic vanes molded onto the rods, have become standard. “Eighty per cent of wells we do now are guided top to bottom.” Tubing leaks, caused

by the rods wearing against the tubing, is a leading cause of workovers, he said. It can cause a workover to go from $30,000 to $70,000 if you have to replace the pipe, he said as an example. Made out of a special type of plastic, guides keep the rod body and collar away from the inside of the tubing. They have to be strong enough not to wear out prematurely, and soft enough not to wear out the tubing. “They are the sacriﬁcial part of the rod string,” he said. “Guides are cheap compared to pipe.” Working on a ratcheting mechanism, a rod rotator will even out wear by keeping the rods in constant rotation. It’s mounted on the polish rod and pumping unit. Rod rotators have become very common on guided rod strings, he said. “Another big part of our business is automa-

tion equipment,” Haukeness said. “After corrosion, fluid pound is the next big factor.” When using fibreglass rods, for instance, they highly recommend using a pump-off controller or variable frequency drive. “When you get a well pumped off, you should have some auto-

mation device to shut it oﬀ, otherwise you have a 15,000-lb.sledge hammer pounding away. It causes rod shock and will cavitate a pump, just blowing the pump apart.” Rod failures mean you go ﬁshing, and no one wants that. It also means downtime for the well. Haukeness noted

you can diagnose pretty much any issue from the well’s pump card. They will assist in analyzing a pump card, suggesting measures like slowing down the pump jack for instance. The program will be designed to give the most possible production without damaging the downhole equipment.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Cemented liners gaining steam

Sanjel employees, in red, from left, Logyn Jacksteip, Avery Rusk and Rod Persson rig up their pipe from the pumping unit to the drilling Áoor of this Partner Drilling rig.

By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – Another way of doing horizontal drilling completions is beginning to have a major impact in south-

east Saskatchewan and southwest Manitoba. Known as a cemented liner, it is an alternative to what has become the standard in frac com-

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office explained what a cement job for these wells entails. A cemented liner style well uses four formulations of cement.

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The cement company will visit a well three times to do the cementing process. For an intermediate casing cement job, they will typically use two cement bulkers and a pumper truck, or in Sanjel’s case take advantage of a divided Sanjel bin pre-positioned on site. Stu Sovdi, a sales rep with Sanjel’s Estevan base, recalled how development got to cemented liners. “When they drilled these horizontal wells, it was open hole [for the horizontal

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section].” Therefore, cement wasn’t needed beyond the intermediate casing point; casing would have only been run to the point where the well reaches its horizontal orientation, at approximately 90 degrees from vertical. Cemented liners came to the fore approximately two years ago as a result of new completion techniques. They are now becoming much more common. Surface The initial surface hole casing is cemented from the surface to approximately 170-plus metres in depth. The wellsite supervisor, or consultant, for the oil company will call in the cement company. Cement is delivered in powder form to location, mixed, pumped and displaced downhole by a cement pumper, like those used by Sanjel. ɸ Page B11

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

B11

Cementers now making three trips to horizontal wells tion. This is normally for shallower horizontal well applications. Of the four formulations of cement used in a typical horizontal well

A Sanjel unit cements in the liner for a well in the Benson area.

ɺ Page B10 To get the cement to flow out of the end of the casing and into the annulus, or space between the casing and the wellbore, the cement company will drop a plug and displace it with water to the bottom of the casing string. When the plug hits the bottom, the cement truck operator will see a pressure buildup. A valve is shut, and the cement is now outside the casing, between the casing and the wellbore. Imagine you have a straw filled with Slurpee. It is inside a larger straw that is closed off at the bottom. If you took a tight-fitting pea, put it in the top of the straw and pumped fluid behind the pea, it would force the Slurpee out of the end of the first straw and into the gap between the two straws. This is essentially how cement is forced into the annulus of the wellbore. “There are two reasons for the surface casing. The first is to isolate the shallow formations and the second to enable well control as the well is drilled to deeper depths.” The rig has to wait approximately eight hours for the cement to set and then they continue drilling the main hole. Intermediate The second visit by the cement company to the site is to cement in the intermediate casing, which runs to the end of the build section (the curved part of the

well). Two formulations of cement are used: a lead cement ﬁrst, followed by a tail cement. It ends up ﬁlling the gap between the casing and the wellbore all around the casing pipe. This typically used to be the end of the job for the cement company, but no longer. Cemented Liner Some horizontal wells will have a liner cemented in, requiring a third visit by the cement company. A liner is run into the horizontal section, and a packer/liner hanger is placed above it in the intermediate casing. The cement goes in before the packer/liner hanger is set. Another option is to just set the surface casing, skip the second

stage, and go straight to the third stage of cementing. The casing in this application is run from the top of the surface casing to the toe of the horizontal section and cemented in one continuous opera-

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Canyon sets up new base in Estevan The new expansive shop for Canyon Technical Services Ltd. in Estevan is under construction.

Story and photos by Brian Zinchuk Estevan – Canyon Technical Services is in the process of setting up a new base in southeast Saskatchewan. Their facility is the second tenant in Estevan’s new Glen Peterson Industrial Park. It’s comprised of two buildings, and for the time being, an oﬃce trailer. “We’re in the well stimulation side of things,” explained Ron Deringer, who hired on as Estevan base manager in December. Their specialties include fracking, acidizing, cementing, nitrogen and coil tubing.

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“Our main office is out of Red Deer. Corporate is in Calgary,” Deringer said. Other facilities are located in Red Deer, Grande Prairie and Medicine Hat. “We’re coming to the southeast because we have customers that had interest in us being here,” Deringer explained. They have been servicing the region on a come-and-go basis. “Now we’re here to stay,” he said. New buildings “Our main office should be up and running by the first of April,” Deringer said on Jan. 7. “Our chemical warehouse should be commissioned on January 14th.” The main shop has four drive through bays, a parts bay, and a two story office area. The facility is on approximately 3.5 acres, right next door to the new Energy Training Institute, which is currently under construction. “We were able to get two parcels to accommodate what we needed, water was tied in, and it suited us. Having a paved road is nice, too.” The floors are heated in the chemical warehouse, making it nice and toasty warm on a bitterly cold January day. “We have products that have to be kept warm,” Deringer said. Initial steps “We’re initially going to run a frac crew and all support equipment, plus all our chemicals,” he noted. “The plan is to roll in the other services by summer.” “It’s a personnel and customer thing. As they’re needed, they’ll end up staying,” Deringer said of the different services. “The intentions are to be a full service base.” “All our equipment is new, less than four years old.” “We’re looking at 35 to 40 people to run our needs here, from equipment personnel, shop mechanics to warehouse personnel and admin.” ɸ Page B13

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

B13

Stimulation company moves into new industrial park

Ron Deringer has come home to Saskatchewan to run Canyon Technical Services Ltd.’s new Estevan base.

ɺ Page B12 Hopefully they can find local people, he added. While they were starting to get applications when Pipeline News visited in early January, Deringer pointed out, “It seems harder to find guys to work here. It’s competitive, too. All the services are looking for people.” “The job is very rewarding. It’s treated me well over the years,” Deringer said. “There are some sacrifices, but as long as you have a balance in your work

and home, it’s very comfortable.” That balance is something Deringer stresses. While yes, it is hard work, and you don’t wait for nice weather, they want to take a holistic approach between home and work. The plan is to run 15 days on/six days off shifts. Two people are needed for each field position. There are lots of opportunities for women as well as men, he noted, but he hasn’t seen many applications for the field side from women. Finding people, however, is the trick, especially because of the local housing situation. Canyon makes use of the local camp facility, but as for more permanent accommodations, they’re hard to come by. “People just don’t have rooms. You can’t get a room,” he said. That’s important for someone who wants to take a holistic approach. Back home While Deringer has spent the last several years in Okotoks, working in downtown Calgary, he grew up in the southeast. “It’s full circle for me. I was born In Shaunavon and raised in Carlyle.” He left in the mid-1970s and found work in well stimulation and coil tubing in Grande Prairie. He’s excited to be back in his old stomping grounds. When he was offered the job, he said, “I can go home. I’d be happy to go down there for you.” His wife will join him once their daughter has completed her last year of high school. “You’re always from Saskatchewan. You’re proud to be from here. At the time [Saskatchewan] just didn’t have the work,” he said.

Deringer’s father worked in the oilﬁeld in the earliest days during the 1950s. “Dad was a battery operator and grader operator. He put in 26 years in the Southeast oilpatch before he passed away.”

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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B15

COSSD now on smartphones By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – The Canadian Oilﬁeld Service and Supply Directory (COSSD) has been the bible of

tem on my BlackBerry Curve 8330. In the BlackBerry’s browser, g o to www.cossd.com. Then scroll to the very bottom of the

pull information from it. Clicking on the app, you can search by keyword/category, or business name.

version is 6.0. That also may have an impact on esthetics of the app.

found. Perhaps they don’t advertise. Taking another stab at it, a search for “Renegade” brought up Renegade Oilﬁeld Construction, located 1 km from my location, as indicated by the GPS. My Garmin Nuvi

265W GPS can be paired with a cellphone by Bluetooth, allowing it to function as a speakerphone. When I reactivated the pairing, it allowed me to dial the number for Renegade simply by touching the number on the screen. ɸ Page B16

The new Canadian OilÀeld Service and Supply Directory (COSSD) applications can be seen on a 4th generation iPod Touch, left, and a BlackBerry 8330. The applications were released in November and December, 2010, respectively.

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the oilpatch for many years now. However, unlike the Bible, it is now seeing updates on a very regular basis. The COSSD is available in several forms – the print version, now in its 30th edition, a similar DVD version, online at www.cossd.com, and on Garmin GPS devices. Two more ways have just been added – as applications on BlackBerry and iPhone smartphones. Rob Pentney, director of sales for COSSD, said, “Whatever you need, this gets it to you right away. “It’s huge. We’re seeing a huge uptake.” (COSSD, JuneWarren-Nickles and Pipeline News are all owned by parent company Glacier Media Inc.) BlackBerry I also tried the sys-

page and click where it says to add COSSD to BlackBerry. This initiates an app download. The diﬀerence between the Garmin and BlackBerry app is that the Garmin GPS has the entire ﬁle downloaded to it. The BlackBerry accesses the network to

It’s not the prettiest interface I’ve seen, but then again, I haven’t seen a lot of pretty interfaces on the Curve 8330. Maybe beauty is an iPhone thing. I’ve also found out that SaskTel will not upgrade the operating system for the Curve 8330 beyond version 4.5, whereas the current

A search for “Bert Baxter” successfully pulled up the Estevan trucking ﬁrm’s phone number. If you click on the number, you can call directly from the application. Doing the same search on the Garmin GPS, I spelled out “Bert Baxter.” No match was

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Regular updates for Garmin GPS

The Canadian OilÀeld Service and Supply Directory (COSSD) is available for free download to Garmin GPS units. It is updated weekly. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

ɺ Page B15 iPod Touch I tested the COSSD Mobile app on my wife’s new 4th generation iPod Touch. The iPod is analogous to the iPhone, however, it is tied to WiFi signal and cannot dial out directly from the directory. Using the App Store on the iPod Touch, a search for COSSD turned up “COSSD Mobile” as a free app. Installation took just seconds. The app screen provides a search box, major

categories, and categories by letter. Looking for pipeline contractors, a tap on the “p” brings up two columns with dozens of categories, including “pipeline contractors.” The list had 127 entries, but I could only access those who have paid ads. Companies whose numbers are listed, but have not paid for ads, are not accessible. Tapping “Bristow Projects,” a company I wrote about last month,

it gave me their text listing, as well as a link to their website. A tap on that link took me to their home page. The iPhone is still not carried by SaskTel as of early January 2011. If you have a Rogers iPhone, you aren’t going to get much coverage out in the ﬁeld, if at all, so that negates the COSSD’s usefulness in that case. However, SaskTel is nearing completion of its 3G+ cellular network, so perhaps this will be a

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moot point soon, at least for SaskTel customers and users of it network. Listings on both the BlackBerry and iPhone are updated daily. Garmin A year ago, I field tested the Garmin oilpatch mapping software put out by COSSD called PatchMap, and an early version of the COSSD on the Garmin. This is a more updated version. To download the file, the link can be found on the main www.cossd. com web page. There are four steps. First, plug it in. Then click on “find devices.” This will likely result in a security warning. You have to allow it to run the add-on. I had previously installed the Garmin Communicator plugin. In my case, I am using a Garmin Nuvi 265W, a lower end unit. The computer identified it, and obtained the unlock code when instructed. It took less than 10 seconds to download the file on a high speed connection. And then I was lost. I didn’t know how to

look for something using it. However, since then COSSD has added a helpful “How-To” pdf ﬁle on their website with precise, illustrated instructions on how to use it. To use the COSSD on a Garmin GPS, select “Where to?” on the main page of the GPS. Then scroll down to the “Extras.” It will appear as “COSSD Advertiser Listings.” These listings are now updated weekly, so it makes sense to plug in your GPS ever once in a while to get the latest updates. While in Weyburn, I activated the listings, and it gave me an arrow and a distance to each of the closest companies listed. This can be really helpful when you’re in a strange town and need to ﬁnd someone. Yes, you could simply enter in their street address, but once you’ve found the listing, you don’t have to. It will point you where you need to go. In the future, another JuneWarren-Nickle’s product, Nickle’s Rig Locator database, up-

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dated daily, will also be available for the Garmin, according to Pentney. “You’ll be able to see every rig location every day.” It will be more applicable to drilling rigs than service rigs, however, as service rigs move around frequently. Pentney said there is about a 96-97 per cent accuracy for drilling rigs, while service rigs are about 40 to 50 per cent accurate. Access to this service will require a subscription to Nickle’s Rig Locator (www.riglocator.ca). Watch for a review in a future edition of Pipeline News. Conclusion All three applications do what they are intended to do – provide access to phone numbers you need, when you need them, without a lot of hassle. Do remember, though, that you are only getting the phone number of people who pay to advertise, whereas with a telephone white pages directory, you would presumably get listings. Essentially, if your business is not in the directory, you will be missed when clients are looking for you. I would suggest the strongest setup would have the directory on both your smartphone as well as your GPS. The smartphone is easier to enter search information, with a better keyboard layout. The GPS, however, ties searches to your present location. Searching for a supply store near Arcola and getting one in Grande Prairie is not going to be that helpful.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

B17

Cutting holes in a monobore With cemented liner completions coming to the fore in the Bakken play, the factor most likely to determine an operator’s costs, and ultimate well results, is the method chosen to communicate with the formation through the liner. In a ball-activated packer and frac port system, a seat in the frac port catches a ball. The hydraulic pressure applied behind the ball causes shear pins to break, resulting in the frac port opening. The ports allow the fracturing fluids to enter the formation and fracture it. Eric Schmelzl handles completion and production technology with Halliburton in Canada. He explained two of the methods Halliburton is using in southeast Saskatchewan. Both methods appear to be growing in popularity, and both require a cemented wellbore rather than the open-hole configuration that typically accompanies the packer/sleeve completions often employed by many Bakken operators. The first of these methods is called CobraFrac-H (as in horizontal), while the second is the CobraJet method. Both methods employ the use of coil-tubing units, although the initial perforating with the CobraFrac-H is usually done via tubing conveyed perforating (TCP). The CobraFrac-H method allows the entire well to be perforated

before the frac treatment occurs. It uses multiinterval perforating to cut through the liner, cement, and into the formation, opening all the desired perf intervals in one or two runs into the well. This minimizes the time required for the frac crew on site, and lowers frac costs as a result. Each perforated interval is then isolated from the others using a straddle assembly at the end of the coiled tubing string, and fractured individually. “We’ve done more of the CobraFrac-H style treatment than any other,” Schmelzl said. “Volumes for ﬂuid displacement are minimized, reducing hauling and heating needs. That’s a big consideration when there are 20 to 30 frac stages to do.” That’s a typical number of frac stages on a horizontal well, Schmelzl explained. In extreme cases, they have seen inter-perf spacing down to 25 metres, however 50 or 100 metre intervals are more typical. Operators are still “feeling their way around,” in reﬁning their techniques, and to date no one has been daring enough to go with extremely tight spacings just yet. The second style of completion methodology is the CobraJet method. An isolation packer is set by a coil tubing unit, with a cutting jet positioned immediately above it. As with the CobraFrac H and ball-style systems,

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you start from the toe of the well and work your way back towards the heel. Once the isolation packer is set, the jet uses high pressure water and sand to cut through the liner, cement, and into the formation, very similar to the precision water-jet cutting tools used in metal fabrication shops. The nozzles literally erode a hole into the formation. It will typically result in approximately six to 12 inches of penetration, however if nitrogen is added, that may increase to 18 to 24 inches. Game changer “When it comes to the application of cemented wellbores in the Bakken, I personally believe the majority of industry operators will switch over,” Schmelzl said. “In a ball-style setup, if a frac gets into water, you need to isolate that stage and shut it off. That can mean the loss of a significant portion of the wellbore, and its recoverable reserves. With a cemented wellbore, any individual fracture can be sealed off, and a replacement fracture can be placed nearby. Operators are assured of a facture at that exact desired point in the well.” ɸ Page B18

This is a cutting jet used by Halliburton to cut through the liner, cement, and into the formation. They call it the CobraJet. Photo submitted

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Completions evolutions bring revolutions Éş Page B17 In contrast, when using a ball style open-hole completion, you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how many fractures you get, he said, or where theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going. The frac can go anywhere between the two packers on that interval. A cemented wellbore, on the other hand, means there is hydraulic isolation due to the cement forcing fractures to initiate at the perforated location. Schmelzl called it â&#x20AC;&#x153;pinpoint fracture plane spacing.â&#x20AC;? Also, the initial fracture in an open-hole style packer system is likely to run longitudinally along the wellbore, â&#x20AC;&#x153;like bursting a garden hose,â&#x20AC;? Schmelzl explained. Generally, it is accepted that the desired plane of fractures is perpendicular to the wellbore. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That would be ideal.â&#x20AC;? With the cemented wellbore, the internal length of the well segment is not exposed to fracturing pressures, limiting fracture initiation to the open perforations only. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been doing this for over three years now,â&#x20AC;? he said. Momentum is picking up in southern Saskatchewan, seeing the results from our operations in Mani-

toba. The Bakken has been around for many years before it became economically outstanding, Schmelzl pointed out. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As the play became economically viable, many operators were mostly interested in duplicating the results of their neighboursâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; oďŹ&#x20AC;setting wells so that they could prove their own lands as viable also. Now that economic viability has been established, I believe that the initial attraction of open-hole style completions is starting to wane.â&#x20AC;? Then thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the whole idea of using expensive downhole tools once, and leaving them underground forever. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You have a lot of jewellery in there, and you have to drill much of it up to reclaim the full casing ID (interal diameter),â&#x20AC;? Schmelzl said. Indeed, Some operators donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bother to drill out the frac port seats, leaving restrictions in the well. Of course, there are exceptions. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In other formations, you want as many initiation points as possible, and an open-hole method of completion can oďŹ&#x20AC;er the best possible results,â&#x20AC;? he oďŹ&#x20AC;ered. The optimal completion method is really a function of the formation properties. As for the most compelling reason to go with a cemented wellbore system, Schmelzl said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The big advantage to an optimally designed completion is knowing you are going to recover the assets you booked, without additional

future costs or additional investments.â&#x20AC;? He noted that having phenomenal initial production from a large number of small fractures doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to drain the reservoir eďŹ&#x20AC;ectively. The optimal completion method is always determined by the reservoir properties, and careful matching of the well spacing, frac design, and completion method is required for optimal returns.

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PIPELINE NEWS Saskatchewan’s Petroleum Monthly

C-Section

February 2011

Can three upstarts slay the Dragons?

Entrepreneurs (l-r) Channing McCorriston, Bryan McCrea and Evan Willoughby pitch their 3twenty Solutions Inc. container business on the CBC Dragons’ Den TV show to be aired Feb. 2. Photo Submitted

By Geoff Lee Saskatoon – Can three Saskatoon-based entrepreneurs with a startup business called 3twenty Solutions Inc. slay some of Canada’s best known business Dragons? Tune in to CBC TV for the Feb. 2 episode of Dragons’ Den and watch Bryan McCrea, Evan Willoughby and Channing McCorriston pitch their recycled shipping container business to a panel of business moguls who have the cash and the know-how to make it happen. What 3twenty Solutions Inc. does is re-use and custom manufacture standard 40-ft. by 8-ft. shipping containers for camps, sleeping quarters, bathrooms, offices and office/storage combinations. The company gets its name from the 320 sq. ft. of a standard size container, but they also work with 20, 48 and 53-ft. length containers ranging from 8.5 to 9.5 ft. in height. The three young business partners will face the Dragons as they look for cash in exchange for an ownership position to help grow their manufacturing capacity. “Our shop is only about 3,000 sq. ft. so we are looking a better space,” said McCrae, the company president. “Our current capacity is about three containers a week. What we need is a large purpose-built space to expand quickly to 15 containers a week.” 3twenty Solutions recently secured its first major contract to build a camp for the Santoy Project gold mine owned by Claude Resources in northern Sas-

katchewan. “We are building North America’s first ever container camp,” said McCrea. “That’s in production right now. It’s a 22-person camp with full kitchen and dining facilities, mud room, bathrooms, and it’s built to expand. “There are 19 modules that go into it. We cut out a hallway and at either end there is a bedroom, for example. We put them all together and connect the hallway. This is our first big job.” The camp will be shipped by ice road to a location about 130 km north east of La Ronge and be fully functional by spring with electric power provided by the client. McCrae hedges his comments about the outcome on Dragons’ Den due to the show’s confidentiality rules, and says “unfortunately, I can’t tell much until the show airs. “I can tell you that, unofficially, some guy from Alberta may be doing business with us.” That Alberta guy could be the show’s Saskatchewan born Dragon W. Brett Wilson, who made his fortune in oil and gas. Wilson once named McCrae, Willoughby and McCorrister winners of a business plan competition hosted by his W. Brett Wilson Centre of Entrepreneurial Excellence in 2009 when they were University of Saskatchewan students. “We were all born entrepreneurs who come out of the U of S,” said McCrae, who is an accounting graduate with some work experience in the uranium industry. ɸ Page C2

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Innovative re-purposing of shipping containers ɺ Page C1 McCorrister, who is the company chief financial officer, is an engineering grad with prior work experience in the earth moving. Willoughby, chief operating officer, is also an accounting grad who has worked for his family’s container business. 3 twenty Solutions can turn 3twenty Solutions began with a silent any shipping container into a partner and a demo product – a single work fully functional living or workoffice. ing space for the mining, con“From then, we’ve been our developing struction and oil and gas inour market and determining where should be dustries. The containers are extremely durable and meet focused,” said McCrae. “Our customers have told us they want us legal widths for moving. to build mining camps and offices – sort of special use mining solutions. That’s where we are at. “We are looking at the oilfield too, to get into building accommodations. We can do offices and different quarters for command centres and what not. We are starting to head to that end of the business. “There is a huge potential in the oil business. That’s probably our next move,” McRae said. McCrae says having two accountants on- This is a rendering of the board made it easier to crunch their numbers container camp that 3twenty to the CBC Dragons especially to Dragon Solutions is building now for a gold mine in northern SasKevin O’Leary, who usually breathes fire on katchewan showing kitchen, those who haven’t done their homework. dining and sleeping modules “I told Kevin what I thought of him,” said connected together. McCrea. “You know what? We knew our numbers. When you have a couple of accountants on the team – we are in good shape. He couldn’t fool us on our numbers.” The business rationale is squarely based on the fact there are hundreds of thousands of available containers in North America each year. “We import more than we export,” explained McCrae, who buys used con-

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tainers from The Container Guy in Warman, Sask. “When the container gets here, it doesn’t go back to China. It’s cheaper to build a new one.” Another solid point for the business potential is the fact containers are made to last. “They are as durable as they get,” said McCrae. “The useful life of one of our camps far exceeds the life of a traditional camp building. The durability is a huge factor.” They are also easy to move with a legal load width, and they are stackable for future expansion. To help hammer home the features and beneﬁts of their product to the CBC Dragons, the 3twenty Solutions team hauled a 10-ft. demo container to Toronto for the show taping last May. “We actually took it up to the 10th ﬂoor of the CBC Building and set it up in the den and did our pitch,” said McCrae. “It was a great experience. We are going to show the rest of Canada what western entrepreneurs are like.” All of 3twenty Solutions container structures are fully customized from window and door placements and room sizes to paint colors. “We are starting with probably the best frame that we could ask for,” said McCrae. “It’s incredibly durable, and made to withstand harsh elements. They are great building blocks.” Each 3twenty Solution container product is spray foamed to create a rigid tight seal that provides a continuous vapour barrier and prevents mould from forming. The company is currently working on a new website with plans to include more details about its products and its Dragons’ Den marketing moment. The Pipeline News will also write a follow-up story with reaction to the Dragons’ Den show for our November issue on camps and accommodation.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Imperial seeks Âżscal pact for pipeline Â&#x201E; By GeoďŹ&#x20AC; Lee Calgary â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Imperial Oil is anxious to resume talks with the federal government for a ďŹ scal framework that would allow it to construct the 1,196-kilometre long Mackenzie Valley Pipeline by the end of this decade. Imperial says approval of the Mackenzie Gas Project by the National Energy Board in December is an important milestone, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just one of many steps needed to be taken before it decides to build the project with a 2007 cost estimate of $16 billion. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are pleased the NEB has concluded that the project should be allowed to proceed in the public interest,â&#x20AC;? said Pius Rolheiser, Imperialâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spokesperson. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Approval from the NEB is a signiďŹ cant positive step. We need to bear in mind this a journey of many steps. Given the length of the boardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision, we will have to take some time to review it and understand it.â&#x20AC;? The gas producers group of Imperial Oil, ConocoPhillips Canada, Shell Canada Ltd. and ExxonMobil Canada and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group that would have a one-third ownership of the pipeline, has until the end of 2013 to make a decision to construct it. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The earliest the proponents could make a decision is the end of 2013,â&#x20AC;? emphasized Rolheiser. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a function of the amount of work

that needs to be done.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;We need to conclude a ďŹ scal framework agreement with the federal government to give us sufďŹ cient conďŹ dence to re-staďŹ&#x20AC; the project, to resume permitting work, engineering work and ďŹ eld work. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have had a dialogue with the federal government for some time, and the discussions are conďŹ dential. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t looking for a handout here. We are looking for a ďŹ scal framework that makes sense for the project. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The project will require literally thousands of additional permits for speciďŹ c pieces of work. All of those things need to be in place before we make an investment decision,â&#x20AC;? Rolheiser said. If this decision is approved by federal Cabinet, the NEB will

â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

Construction of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline would allow for the Ă ow of natural gas from the Niglintgak, Taglu and Parsons Lake natural gas Ă&#x20AC;elds near the Mackenzie Delta south to Northwest Alberta and North American markets. The proposed project producers are Imperial Oil, ConocoPhillips Canada, Shell Canada and ExxonMobil Canada. The Aboriginal Pipeline Group (APG) would have a one-third ownership in the pipeline. Image submitted

then i s sue the appropriate approvals, including a CertiďŹ cate of Public Convenience and Necessity. Imperial has the most at stake in the decision, as a one third owner of the pipeline, and a 50 per cent owner of the total natural gas volume to be shipped to North American markets. Asked how much of

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the $16 billion cost Imperial would assume Rolheiser said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Those signiďŹ cant decisions have yet to be made. We will be issuing a revised cost estimate in due course.â&#x20AC;? The Mackenzie Gas Project includes three onshore natural gas ďŹ elds, a 457-km pipeline to carry natural gas liquids from Inuvik, N.W.T. to an ex-

â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

isting oil pipeline at Norman Wells, N.W.T. and other related facilities. The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline would run from the Beaufort Sea to northwestern Alberta, and is designed to carry up to 34.3 million cubic metres (1.2 billion cubic feet) of natural gas per day. The NEB attached 264 conditions to its approval in areas such as engineering, safety and environmental protection. If the project is built, the NEB will monitor

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the project throughout its lifespan to see to it that the operators meet these conditions. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our goal was to encourage public participation and listen to the people so they could help us determine the public interest of the project,â&#x20AC;? the panel said in their Reasons for Decision. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We looked at how the project would contribute to sustainability in the way it would affect the people, the land where they live, and the economy, now and in the future. É¸ Page C4

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Mackenzie Valley still seen as vital ɺ Page C3 “We recognize that the Mackenzie Gas Project would have much larger and more far-reaching effects than previous developments in the North.” Ask if the current low price for natural gas would influence Imperial’s decision on whether to proceed or not, Rolheiser says Imperial always takes a longterm view. “Despite the economic downturn and the conditions of the gas market, we continue to believe that given projected demand in the North American gas market, we believe that positions MacKenzie as a significant new vital source of gas for the North American market,” he said. “Current gas prices are what they are, but we are talking about a project that would come on stream at the earliest late this decade, and would operate for 20 plus years after that. “We would be shortsighted in the extreme if we based our analysis on today’s prices or even next year’s prices.” In its Reasons for Decision document, the NEB panel had no doubt the economic benefits of the project would be substantial. The NEB determined the $16 billion construction estimate would increase Canada’s gross domestic product by more than $13 billion, and almost $6 billion in labour income would be generated. Governments would gain about $2.9 billion in tax revenues. “During 20 years of operation, the companies estimate they would spend $5 billion to operate facilities,” said the panel. “The increase in Canadian gross domestic product from the project during that period could range from $26 billion to $42 billion. More than $2.3 billion in labour income would be generated, and tax

revenues would range from $8.8 billion to $12.5 billion. The federal government would also get between $500 million and $1.8 billion in royalties on production.” Sizeable economic beneﬁts would also ﬂow to the economy of the Northwest Territories throughout the life of the project. The project could also generate thousands of jobs for workers in Saskatchewan and Alberta, but Imperial cautions the answer to questions about the project creating jobs is premature.

“Should the project proceed, yes it would, but again, we need to realize significant work needs to be done before we are in a position to make a decision to proceed with the project,” said Rolheiser. The NEB began hearing evidence in January 2006 on five applications filed by Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Limited, the Mackenzie Valley Aboriginal Pipeline Limited Partnership, Imperial Oil Resources Limited, ConocoPhillips Canada (North) Limited, Shell Canada Limited and ExxonMobil Canada Properties. Final argument was completed in April, 2010.

Birdbear could be a feather in Tuscany’s cap Macklin – The Birdbear formation could eventually help Tuscany Energy Ltd. to meet or exceed its long-term goal to boost production to 1,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Tuscany holds a 30 per cent interest in 2,570 (837 net) acres on a developing Birdbear oil play in the same region as Evesham. The Birdbear is an emerging play in west-central Saskatchewan where total production from producers has grown from 37 bpd in January 2008 to over 1,000 bpd by December 2009, according to the Ministry of Energy and Resources. Meanwhile, Tuscany reports it will be as aggressive as it can in 2011 using cash ﬂow to fund its development of the Dina pool at both Evesham and more recently near Macklin and its exploration plans on ﬁve other plays. The company has acquired 3,770 (1,131 net)

acres on a Dina play near Macklin that includes four shut-in Dina horizontal oil wells, a water disposal well and seven square miles of 3D seismic. It also has 30 per cent interest in one section of the Shaunavon/Chambery play where 1 (0.3 net) well has been drilled and completed. The Calgary-based company began 2011 with over 300 boepd to its credit with five producing horizontal wells from the Dina formation in the Evesham field in Saskatchewan. The fourth and fifth horizontal wells were brought on production in late 2010 with Tuscany as the operator holding a 60 per cent working interest. Both wells were drilled on 50-metre spacing and delivered initial production rates of approximately 100 bpd with a water cut of less than a 10 per cent. Tuscany has a water disposal well adjacent to the Evesham Dina oil pool.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Hurricane wheels out its new stable foam unit

process. It provides a production evaluation and well stimulation.” It’s also well suited for sand cleanouts of heavy oil wells, steam injection, slant oil wells, directional oil wells, disposal wells and gas wells. Hurricane Industries worked closely with the Energy Resources Conservation Board to become the ﬁrst stable foam service company to be Directive 033 compliant. This new unit adds to Hurricane’s foam ﬂeet which includes three units rated at 660 CFM at 1,800 lb. of continuous pumping and one unit at 750 CFM at 2,200 lb.

Will 3twenty “contain” the Dragons? Watch CBC’s Dragons’ Den on February 2 to find out!

Hurricane Industries has launched a new stable foam unit into service to keep up with the demand for foam cleanouts. Pictured with the new vehicle are (l-r) Blake Fisher, Tom Fisher, Bruce Slade and Harry Ward. Photo by Geoff Lee

Lloydminster – Hurricane Industries Ltd. based in Lloydminster has added a new stable foam unit to its fleet that will allow it to keep pace with the growing demand for foam cleanouts in horizontal and vertical wellbores. The new stable foam unit commenced service in January as the 15th and largest unit in Hurricane’s foam fleet with a 1,350 CFM compressor and 2,200 psi of continuous pumping pressure to a maximum 2,500 psi intermittently. “We acquired the new stable foam unit in response to the increasing market of horizontal well cleanouts and stimulation.” said Tom Fisher, Hurricane’s president. “The demand for foam cleanouts continues to grow throughout the heavy oil corridor from Wabasca, Peace River, Bonnyville, Lloydminster and Kindersley. “This new addition to our fleet will also allow us to test bigger diameter and longer pipelines with its increased volume of air.” The unit is mounted on a trailer and made in the United States to Hurricane’s specifications, and winterized at the Lloydminster shop before being commissioned for service. “The stable foam unit complements our coiled tubing units for wellbore cleanouts of horizontal liners to increase production,” added Fisher. Hurricane owns and operates an extensive fleet of pressure, vacuum trucks and hydro vacuum trucks with related oil field services including power tong repair. “The development of new downhole tools is making the job of foam cleanouts better all the time,” noted Fisher. “Most of the new tools are being developed by Lloydminster companies. “There are more cost-effective benefits using stable foam as a well cleanout

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Flatpak proves its mettle with U.S. gas wells

Collin Morris, president of CJS Coiled Tubing. The company supplies all sizes of its Flatpak encapsulated coil tubing for the oil and gas market including this specialized jumbo size spool. Left is Ronin, a new friendly yard and family dog that Morris rescued from the SPCA.

Lloydminster – Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico are almost as familiar to CJS Coiled Tubing Supply Ltd. as its own base in Lloydminster. Energy companies working gas and deep shale plays in southern United States have come to rely on CJS’s Flatpak encapsulated coiled tubing to keep old wells in a productive state to make a buck. “The gas and deep shale markets have accepted it very well,” said Collin Morris, CJS president at the Lloydminster shop. “The deliquification market, in general, has been very accepting, especially for low rate deliquification using hydraulic submersible pumps and gas lifts as well as chemical injections. “The Flatpak in a pump combination is typically used in end-of-life or lower-volume wells that are experiencing some liquid loading problems. “You would run a pump and the Flatpak to pump the water off to allow the gas to flow to surface.” From two to five encapsulated conduits would be used for deliquification applications with the most common hydraulic set up using two hydraulic Flatpak conduits with one production conduit. Flatpak can encapsulate any diameter of coiled tubing or electrical conduits, and is deployed by a conventional shallow coiled tubing unit equipped with a specialized hanger and wellhead system. CJS has installed hundreds of thousands of feet of Flatpak at well depths ranging from 1, 500 to 8,000 ft. with the ability to convey hydraulic submersible pumps and jet pumps. “Depending on what your application is, the main advantage of the Flatpak is having the multiple conduits,” said Morris. “You are able to provide multiple clean circuits for drive fluids and electronics as well as multiple injection and production ports for various chemicals, gases and fluids.” ɸ Page C7

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011 Collin Morris holds a sample of a dual Flatpak conduit used for a wide range of oil and gas operations. Flatpak is deployed by a coiled tubing unit.

U of S pilot project Saskatoon – The promise of separating bitumen from Canada’s oil sands with minimal water and energy use is behind a $2 million federal and provincial research project being led by the University of Saskatchewan Toxicology Centre. Funding from the Canada-Saskatchewan Western Economic Partnership Agreement announced in December will assess the commercial viability of a new bitumen processing technology called San-Tek 2000. The three-year research project is being led by renowned environmental toxicologist John Giesy from the U of

S with San-Tek 2000 developers from the International Petroleum & Environmental Recovery Company. Pilot plant testing will scale up the San-Tek 2000 technology from the U of S Toxicology Centre’s lab to the pilot plant stage. The Toxicology Centre will conduct the analytical work. If successful, the technology could contribute to cleaner, more economical oilsands extraction processes. Under the agreement, the federal and provincial governments are each investing $1,017,850. The U of S is contributing $274,000 in-kind. This project will create ﬁve jobs.

Seeking new markets ɺ Page C6 While hydraulic artificial lift systems require multiple strings, Flatpak reduces the cost and complexity by combining all tubing into one uniform thermoplastic body. Morris says the Flatpak product was intended for the local Canadian gas market, but the collapse of gas prices and higher exploration costs forced the company to find new markets. “Most of our customers are in the United States,” said Morris. “They seem to have a more favourable economic profile for gas. “They are close to market and they don’t have as many transportation and processing fees that the Canadian market does. “Up until recently, probably 90 per cent of our work has been gas, whether it is coalbed methane or conventional gas. “Because some of the production tubes are smaller, it is easier to lift lower rates of water than it is oil. Flatpak is well suited for gas because of the low liquid lifting rates. Recently, we’ve gone a little ‘more oily,’” Morris said. Quantum Downhole Systems in Calgary has been using a dual Flatpak licensed by CJS in combination with their own jet pump to perform wellbore cleanouts on heavy oil horizontal wells and some shallow gas wells. “Quantum has seen a great success on the on oil well side so hopefully that continues,” said Morris. “We are trying to get ‘more oily’ because I would like to stay home a bit more. “A lot of our volume has been in the southern States which means we spend a lot of time travelling. If there is any way I get a little more local, I would like to do that.’ Morris may have his way as CJS is launching a new progressive cavity pump application for the heavy oil market this month. The product is being put to the test by a major oil producer in the Lloydminster area. “We expect to do more business in Canada on the oil side if our progressive cavity initiative works out,” said Morris who will have more to say about it when performance data is available. “We could also be doing a few condensate wells this year using Flatpak with hydraulic submersible reciprocating pumps. As far as the gas market goes, I don’t anticipate an increase demand for Flatpak there.”

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

New horizontal drilling record made to be broken By Geoﬀ Lee Regina – Saskatchewan set a record for drilling horizontal oil wells in 2010 that threatens to be broken again in 2011. Year-end statistics from the Ministry of Energy and Resources show that 1,531 horizontal oil wells were drilled in 2010. That's an 88 per cent increase over the ﬁgure for 2009 and a 13 per cent increase over the previous record set in 2008. Horizontal drilling shows no signs of letting up in 2011 either, in keeping with the forecast from the Canadian Association of Drilling Contractors for

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a continuation of oil directed drilling and a marginal improvement in overall activity throughout the year. “Horizontal well drilling has now become the standard in the Canadian oil industry,” said Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd. “Twenty years ago it was experimental technology that our province pioneered, but now it represents more than 50 per cent of our total oil production.” Horizontal wells accounted for 56 per cent of the 2,730 oil wells drilled in Saskatchewan last year. The 2,730 figure is a 70 per cent increase over the number of oil wells drilled in 2009 and was above the 2,360 yearly average for oil wells drilled over the last five years. Boyd noted that horizontal oil wells involve more complicated drilling processes and require more work by his ministry to review and approve well licences. The ministry is accordingly hiring eight additional staff in its well licensing areas and field offices to deal with industry demands. “Our oil industry bounced back from a more challenging year in 2009 with great drilling numbers and increased activity in land sales,” said Boyd. “We're looking forward to a strong 2011 from the industry and are working hard as a government to be responsive to that activity, and in particular to this new trend in horizontal drilling.” Last year, the province's oil and gas industry recorded approximately $10.5 billion in sales and invested $3.3 billion in exploration and development activity. It provides direct and indirect employment for more than 29,000 people.

North Battleford’s power play in action North Battleford – SaskPower has plugged in its new 138-megawatt (MW) Yellowhead Power Station in North Battleford into the provincial electricity grid with more local power generation in the works. The North Battleford Energy Centre, a new 261-MW natural gas power station is currently under construction several kilometres away from the Yellowhead plant. Northland Power, a leading independent power producer, has been chosen to build and operate the combined-cycle, baseload facility, which will begin operation in 2013. The new Yellowhead natural gas generating station went into service in December, and increases SaskPower’s total available generating capacity to 3,982 MW. The $250-million facility is equipped with three General Electric LM6000 simple cycle gas turbines

and will be operated through satellite remote control technology from Regina. As a peak load power station, Yellowhead will be brought into service when there is high demand for electricity in Saskatchewan. “Our government is committed to making the necessary investments to meet the needs of our customers and communities, to lay the groundwork for a greener province, and to sustain Saskatchewan’s economic momentum,” said Rob Norris, Minister responsible for SaskPower. SaskPower expects to add another 400 MW of generating capacity to the province by 2013 to meet a growing demand for electricity. The Crown corporation also plans to double its wind power capacity over the next few years as part of the power generating mix.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Gauge checks temp. and vibration Richmond, VA â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Imagine having an affordable pump doctor on hand to monitor the health of your progressive cavity pumps and other positive displacement pumps in the ďŹ eld. Colfax Corporation, a U.S. based global leader in ďŹ&#x201A;uid handling solutions, did just that with the development of their SmartSense Pulse gauge to monitor pump temperature and vibration. The Pulse is Colfaxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newest intelligent pump monitoring technology and follows on the heels of their initial and larger SmartSense system with its multiple 24/7 monitoring functions. Both systems are applicable for a variety of industries that utilize pumps, such as oil and gas, power generation, mining, chemicals and marine. The new compact Pulse will be launched in the U.S. market in the ďŹ rst quarter of 2011 followed by a Canadian release pending CSA approval. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When it is launched in Canada, it will be available in all provinces and will be oďŹ&#x20AC;ered through our network of authorized Colfax distributors,â&#x20AC;? said Todd Kierstead, markets and products specialist with Colfax Americas. The Pulse easily ďŹ ts near the bearing on a pump to gauge temperature and vibration and measures only 2.4 inches long, 1.6 inches wide and 1.3 inches deep. At-a-glance LEDs

on the unit indicate pump performance and provide preventive maintenance alerts when needed. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Colfaxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s SmartSense Pulse is designed to enable a level of monitoring that would otherwise require more staďŹ&#x20AC; and diagnostic equipment, which would be expensive and impractical,â&#x20AC;? said Dan Yin, an electronics engineer at Colfax. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Temperature and vibration are key indicators of a pumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s operating performance,â&#x20AC;? he added. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Excessive levels of either one indicate a need for adjustments, and having a simple, easy-touse, automated system to constantly monitor pump conditions should enhance operation, reduce downtime and increase energy eďŹ&#x192;ciency.â&#x20AC;? Colfaxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initial SmartSense system has a larger control unit, measuring 22 inches long, 20 inches wide and 10 inches deep with the additional sensors including seal leak monitoring, wear detection and cavitation sensing. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are working on the development of a number of additional new sensors which can be used to monitor the operation and health of critical pipeline pumps,â&#x20AC;? said Kierstead. The larger SmartSense systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s control modules can be accessed any time through the ownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own data network, the Internet, cell phones or wireless devices. The system can also

operate independently using its own customizable algorithm or connected to a group of pumps managed from a central oďŹ&#x192;ce. Colfaxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s software for the larger SmartSense system also has the ability to alert operators to the need for parts, with accompanying ordering documentation, for regularly scheduled maintenance or to address replacement needs as they arise. Either system can be installed on new pumps during manufacture or added as a retroďŹ t to existing pumps made by

any company. The new Pulse will operate on all types of pumps oďŹ&#x20AC;ered by Colfax. It can also be applied to other pump types if the pump has a critical rotating element where temperature and vibration are indicators of equipment health. Colfax brought the Pulse to the attention of the market at a PowerGen show from Dec. 14 to 16 in Orlando, Florida where Kierstead says it generated a strong industry buzz. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The market reaction to the SmartSense Pulse has been phenomenal,â&#x20AC;?

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Titanium Tubing to grow closer to home Lloydminster â&#x20AC;&#x201C; There is no fear in Brutus, the watchdog, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reďŹ&#x201A;ected in the way brothers Pat and Cory Potter run their Titanium Tubing Technology Ltd. coiled tubing business in Lloydminster. Titanium was incorporated in 2006 with a single coiled tubing unit, and has grown most rapidly in the past year to six coiled units and 20 employees, thanks to the Pottersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bulldog approach to diversifying. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We try to have our coiled tubing units going out doing as many diďŹ&#x20AC;erent jobs as possible,â&#x20AC;? said Pat, the operations manager. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to pigeon hole our company to just being a service company or a completions company. É¸ Page C11

Cory Potter, 25, and his brother Pat, 29 have experienced rapid growth in the past year with their Titanium Tubing Technology Ltd. company. The young entrepreneurs now have six coiled tubing units that are Class I and Class II rated and a young staff of 20 employees.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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Titanium Tubing Technology is a go anywhere company. This picture shows crews hanging instrumentation coil near Fort McMurray in November. Photo submitted

On the cusp of new and exciting coil work

ɺ Page C10 “We’ve taken our units and gone in every possible direction that we can to be as diverse as possible. We do a huge number of horizontal well completions. “We are doing a lot of perforating on coil, logging on coil, drilling – plug setting and retrieval, acidizing and nitrogen pumping. There is a whole new realm of services we can do. “We are trying to stay on the cusp of what is new and exciting,” Pat said. Titanium services the medium and heavy oil market in Western Canada with a growing list of services that will include SmartCoil applications this spring. SmartCoil is electric line placed inside coiled tubing that will allow Titanium to perform real time perforating and logging with a coiled unit. “This will eliminate the need for a conventional wireline unit to come in,” said Pat. “It will also eliminate the need for downhole tractors which are horribly expensive and prone to failure.” In the meantime, Titanium hopes to ﬁnd more work in its own backyard following its ongoing experience with CJS Coiled Tubing Supply Ltd. Titanium is running CJS’s Flatpak encapsulated tubing into vertical and horizontal heavy oil wells in the Lloydminster area with a submersible PC pump attached. “It’s a real exciting new thing for us because these things are huge,” said Pat about the potential for new coiled tubing services with Flatpak. “It will kind of bring coiled tubing into a new age. We are expanding our service to more service rig oriented stuﬀ,” he added. “Conventionally, you would need tubing and rods to land your PC pumps. Now it’s all being done with Flatpak. “This eliminates having a service rig come in and do your completion. Everything can be done rig-less with a coiled tubing unit.” ɸ Page C12

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Adoption of Àatpak should allow for more work near home ɺ Page C11

Brutus, the watchdog, looks over Pat Potter's shoulder.

If the new Flatpak application catches on, it will help Titanium to establish the larger presence in Lloydminster that it has been missing. “It’s almost a new venture for us because we almost don’t have a presence in our base area,” said Pat. “Essentially, we are a fleet of gypsy rigs which has worked out fine. “If there is work to be in remote areas, we are more than happy to service them. It really broadens our work scope by leaving the area. “This is a nice fit to do something different with something that will potentially become a local option for our customers. “The CJS Flatpak project can get us into the local market. We feel there is a lot of work we are missing out on. “Essentially we were a project company. We only took project work. Being a small company, we pigeon-holed ourselves and put all of our eggs in one basket. “This is the second year in a row that we haven’t taken any project work to speak of. We are trying to keep our base customers happy. Now we are diversified so we can help them in a bunch of ways too. “Efficiency plays the biggest role in this industry. Everybody wants to get their oil out of the ground yesterday and capitalize on the high oil price. “If we can beat a conventional service rig – that really capitalizes on the oil company’s bottom dollar.”

Asked for his take on why Titanium has taken time to establish a local business presence, Cory, who focuses on field supervision, says it’s due to an early business decision to carry large size pipe for specialty jobs. “The larger diameter pipe is used in longer horizontal or drilling applications with higher volumes through the pipe so you can get your returns up faster,” he said. “It doesn’t bother us to travel around. You learn lots of new stuff. “We can do completions, recompletions, abandonments, all sorts of different applications.” The company moved into a new and larger shop and yard last fall to keep with the strong industry demand for coiled tubing services in Western Canada. All six of Titanium’s coiled tubing units are Class I and Class II rated for high pressure sour oil and gas wells. Titanium is also busier than ever with cementing, perforating and completions services with an eye to cost saving for customers. “We are fighting to keep up with the demand,” said Pat. “We have built a really good customer base and we deliver second to none service. Our experience out in the field is really unmatched by anyone else.” The Potter brothers grew up in the small farming community of St. Louis near Prince Albert Saskatchewan. They both cut their teeth in the coiled tubing business for several years before striking out on their own. “We had our fair share of trial and error with different equipment and different employers,” said Pat. “That’s why we started this company. We saw what was done right and what we done wrong and we felt there was a real need for some fresh blood in the industry for this service. “We have a young staff. We try to hire guys not so much on coil experience, but for their leadership skills, and what kind of role they can play, and how they fit in with our core group of guys. “Our slogan is If It’s Coiled Tubing, Make It Titanium. We are serious about that. There is no job out there that we can’t handle. We have gone down as far as 3,000 metres. “We have done everything from a little sweet gas cleanout to a 35 per cent high pressure sour well. This is a really well versed company with a lot of experience in the field. “If can be more diversified in the areas that we work in, that will keep the ball rolling and the company growing as well,” Pat said.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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Pickford Group to display at Bonnyville O & G show

Logging • Multistage Perforating • Slants • Pressure Testing • Foaming • Complettions • Workovers • Pipeline Cleanouts • Horiztonals

the companies that will buy from us,” said Oake. “We also rent and sell a lot of equipment used by contractors that come in onsite for the shutdowns. “There are a lot of contractors we deal with out of Edmonton, Lloydminster and Rocky Mountain House. “Our busy season is shutdown time. September, October and November is turnaround time. It will calm down in December and January, and then pick up again. “The other side is the construction side – upgraders and new

plants – we get very busy in those times. Of course, it’s a little slower now than it was in the past.” Pickford sells and rents a lot of specialized equipment for reﬁneries and steam assisted gravity drainage operations in the Bonnyville area that is known for its large in-situ thermal operations. “Everything is useable in those plants, and there are a lot of plants up in that area,” said Oake. “There’s Cenovus, CNRL, Imperial Oil , Husky and Shell. It’s a good market. If you

look at Lloyd, you have Husky and for the most part – Husky. There are probably 10 or 12 plants in the Bonnyville area. ɸ Page C14

Merle Pederson, technical sales for plant maintenance equipment could be on hand at the new Bonnyville Oil and Gas show June 22-23 to answer questions about this model tube tester and plugging equipment for a heat exchanger.

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Lloydminster – If it’s not broke don’t fix it. That applies to the oil and gas show exhibit strategy that Pickford Group Ltd. will deploy at the inaugural Bonnyville & District Oil and Gas Show June 22-23. The Edmontonbased company will set up the same display of a tube tester and plugging equipment for a heat exchanger that caught the eye of many turnaround contractors at the Lloydminster Heavy Oil Show last September. “We have a lot of customers in Bonnyville. Everything will be set up basically the same as the Lloyd show,” said Dave Oake, division manager for plant maintenance equipment. “The Lloydminster area is a good area, but geographically we have quite a few more customers in the Bonnyville area.” Pickford relies on the use of an attractive model display at the Lloydminster show to drive area sales and rentals of their plant maintenance equipment and flow control and valve automation divisions in Edmonton. “The show is very important to us for this area because we don’t have an office here,” said Oake, at the company booth back in September. “The only time people see me is when I come up here. It’s good in the smaller towns and the smaller areas that we have a presence here, and people see some of the equipment that’s available to them. “Basically, what we sell and rent is specialty tools, hydraulic torque tools, pipe cutting equipment and portable machining equipment.” Contractors such as pipefitters,boilermakers, steamfitters, millwrights and machinists who work on turnarounds at the Husky Lloydminster Upgrader are among Pickford’s target market. “Husky is one of

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Pickford Group

Dave Oake from the Pickford Group Ltd.’s distribution depot in Edmonton plans to set up a similar display at the Bonnyville &District Oil and Gas show June 22-23 to what they brought to the Lloydminster Heavy Oil Show last September.

ɺ Page C13 “There are a lot of people that live in Bonnyville and Cold Lake that work in that Bonnyville area. It should be a good show. It’s the first time.” Pickford wants customers there to know their inventory of equipment includes a 28,000 ft. lb torque rental tool that can handle up to a 6 1/8-inch diameter nut and cold cutting equipment for pipe from 2-inch to 80-inches in diameter. The plant maintenance division focuses on sales and rentals of specialized equipment for flange joint integrity, torquing and tensioning, portable machining, and cold cutting of pipe, flanges and vessels. They also have equipment for heat exchanger testing, plugging equipment for maximum efficiency and hydrostatic test plugs to decrease downtime. Other available tools include a mechanical flange spreader, pneumatic torque wrenches and nut splitters – the list goes on. The flow control and valve automation division provides pneumatic and electric solutions for the valve requirements of the oil and gas, petrochemical, refinery, pulp and paper and mining industries among others. Pickford is a privately owned company with its headquarters in Calgary with its central distribution centre in Edmonton serving Western Canada. “The business has grown tremendously since 1999,” said Oake. “There was a bit of a slowdown in 2007 until about now, but things are starting to pick up a little. “We just distribute the tools. We don’t manufacture anything. Our main focus is to sell equipment, but we also have a large rental fleet of a lot of our different tools. “We don’t do any service work. We just sell and rent. “In most cases the client knows how to use the equipment. If they don’t know how to use it, then I will come out and do training on it with one of our mobile trailers. “I have a demonstration training stand, and I will go to the different sites at shutdown time.” Oake says the reason contractors rent tools is because specialty tools can be pricey for limited use on one or two jobs. “It’s a big capital expenditure just for a one cut or one flange they have to torque up. It saves them money that way,” he said.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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Alberta kick-starts new year with oilsands monitoring plan Edmonton – Alberta heads into 2011 with a group of independent experts studying how to set up, operate, and govern an effective environmental monitoring and reporting system for the oil sands. The panel of professionals from scientific, academic, health, economics and other fields went to work at the beginning of January with a mission to recommend a new monitoring system by June 2011. The demand for a better monitoring system follows the release of a federal oil sands advisory report on water monitoring for the Lower Athabasca Basin area on Dec. 21. “Until this system is fixed there will continue to be uncertainty and public distrust in the environmental performance of the oil sands industry and government oversight,” the federal panel stated. The federal advisory panel was set up Sept. 30, 2010 by former minister of the environment Jim Prentice to review and evaluate the existing body of scientific research and monitoring. Prentice noted at the time that “serious concerns have been raised about oil sands pollution entering the Basin and whether environmental monitoring systems are well-designed and implemented.” The call for action by both levels of government and the public is attributed to the release last summer of a long-term air and water study conducted by the University of Alberta. The U of A study led by biological sciences Professor David Schindler found high levels of organic contaminants including carcinogens within 50 kilometres of two major oil sands upgraders. The results disproved claims by government and industry that the pollution is a naturally occurring seepage from the oil sands deposits and are not related to the oil sands industry. The new Alberta panel will give direction for provincial action required to address and implement recommendations that arise from the provincial data review committee currently underway. “These efforts will lead to a new, robust worldrecognized monitoring system that will give assurances the oil sands are being developed under the closest of scrutiny and oversight,” said Alberta Environment Minster Rob Renner. “The system must meet the environmental challenges we face today, be adaptable enough to respond quickly to change, and anticipate and monitor areas where future cumulative environmental impacts may occur.” The experts will also provide detailed actions on how the environmental system can be expanded to all media in the oil sands region – air, land, water and bio-diversity – and also how the system can extend throughout the entire province. “We are developing a good foundation of information to inform our work. What’s needed now is an in-depth action plan, and that’s what I expect

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this panel will deliver,” said Renner. Renner also agrees with the federal government’s oil sands advisory panel that argues for a collaborative approach to monitoring the oil sands environment. “We must work with the federal government to ensure our collective eﬀorts are complementary as we revamp monitoring in the oil sands,” said Renner.

“The bottom line is we must assure Albertans, Canadians and the world that the oil sands are being developed responsibly. “To do this, Alberta needs a ﬁrst-rate monitoring system to protect all environmental mediaair, land, water, and biodiversity. “We’ve been building the foundation for such a system over the last couple of years as we transition to a cumulative eﬀects management system.”

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Tempco super single rigs built for speed Nisku– Who’s the fastest driller in the Lang, especially for the junior oil and gas west? companies Tempco mostly works with. That’s debatable, but the Tempco Drill“They want to get it as quick as they can ing Company with its operations base in to get in on the payroll and produce oil. The Nisku, Alberta is establishing itself as being payback is quicker. It also cuts their costs. If very quick on the drill, particularly in the you can knock a day oﬀ a well, it can save Kindersley area with its new super single them $30,000 a day,” said Lang. Rig 6. Tempco ended 2010 with a test well for The new Rig 6 drilled about 40 horizon- Allstar Energy on the Red Pheasant First tals into the Viking play in the Kindersley Nation with Rig 1 about 33 km south of area for junior oil companies such as Petro North Battleford where Lang says there is Uno in 2010. It was converted from one of potential for more work. Tempco’s six conventional rigs and went into “It’s kind of a tight area right now so operation July 18. we are not allowed to say much about it,” he “They’ve got it down to a pretty good noted. science right now,” said general manager The company also did some drilling near and partner Eric Lang at the Nisku com- Virden, Manitoba in 2010, but is keeping plex. “Rig 6 has been able to drill some of away from the Bakken where diﬀerent types the fastest wells in Kindersley. of tubular are needed for the wider diameter “Our quickest wells that we’ve drilled wells being drilled. are the 1,500-metre horizontals. We’ve had ɸ Page C20 them down to 68 hours Rig 4 was the Àrst rig that Eric Lang built for Tempco Drillfrom spud to spud.” ing in Kindersley starting in 1996 about the same time That compares to he became a partner in the company. Tempco moved its drilling a 600-metre operational base to Nisku in 1995 where Lang continues vertical well for oil comto oversee the construction of new rigs. Tempco recentpanies in the Lloydminly converted one its conventional rigs to a super single ster area in the same mostly for use in Kindersley. A second super single for Kindersley is under construction. timeframe. Photo by Geoff Lee “Speed counts,” said

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

'It's always been good on that side for us' This new top drive super single Rig 6 was built by Tempco Drilling in Nisku. Rig 6 drilled about 40 horizontal wells in the Kindersley area from July 18 to year-end 2010. This year promises to be another busy time for Tempco in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Photo submitted

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ɺ Page C19 “Right now, I have a plate full of stuff we could do up here without having to stick my neck out any further,” joked Lang, who has worked at Tempco for approximately 28 years. Tempco’s rigs will be active in the first half of the year in the Alberta oil sands near Conklin, Fort McMurray and Wabasca, and in the Edam, Kindersley, Lloydminster and Macklin areas of Saskatchewan. Rig 6 has been put to the test already in 2011 with a 10-well drilling program of vertical core wells for Rallyemont Energy about 35 km north of North Battleford during the first week of January. In February, it will move back to the Kindersley area drilling for Petro Uno that has a lined up a year’s worth of work for the driller. “Bigger and faster is the protocol out there right now, so we are just kind of switching our conventional drilling to that,” said Lang. “The flavour of the century is horizontals. Everybody is doing them right from the little 10 well oil companies to the mega majors. “That’s where we have to shift to if we want to keep busy and keep our rigs going. We have to go with the flow.” Tempco was able to run five rigs most of the year in 2010 with calls picking up in the summer when word got word out about their super single rig with its 2,000 to 2,500-metre drilling range. “That’s what we’ve got now,” beamed Lang. “We’ve got them rated at 2,100-metres, but they stretch out to 2,500-metres. The deepest we’ve done is 2,300-metres, but Rig 6 is mostly drilling 1400-metre horizontals. “The key to being profitable is being efficient and try to keep drilling in low cost areas. We’ve always stayed the shallow end of it – 1500- metres and under. “Now we are going after the shallow horizontals. That for us is a big bonus that they are doing the shallow horizontals.” Lang estimates there are about 20 active rigs in

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the Kindersley, Kerrobert, Coleville and Edam areas with production driven by the shallow horizontal wells that the super single Rig 6 is well suited for. “It’s always been good on that side for us,” said Lang about Saskatchewan. Lang was born and raised on a farm at Tramping Lake near Kindersley. “We seem to do more over there than we do on the Alberta side for the last few years,” he added. “It’s just that type of well that our rigs are well designed for, and that’s where we want to be – shallow heavy oil and gas.” Lang says the AC top drive, super single Rig 6 is a lot “beefier” to drill deeper and it saves time with its ability to handle longer tubular. “We will use a 45-foot pipe instead of 31-foot pipe, so it’s quicker tripping pulling it in and out of the hole. We put a top drive on it which gives the super single its true recognition. “There’s more electronics and hydraulics and stuff like that, but it’s quicker drilling and quicker to make connections.” The super single designed and built in Nisku is equipped with a 1,000 hp pump compared to the 500 to 800 hp pumps found on most conventional rigs. Tempco is currently working on converting its conventional Rig 5 to the super single configuration this year to stay competitive. “It will cost you $3 million to change over a conventional to a super single in the equipment that you need – the top drive, the tubular,” said Lang. “It’s all stuff that you can’t just go across the street and rent. “It’s not a cheap venture, but for the shallow side of it, it’s fairly reasonable to get into that market. “We want to have it ready to go out right after spring break. It looks like that will go down to the Kindersley area also.” A super single rig is the new industry benchmark with automated pipe handling and the ability to operate from vertical to slant directions. They also require more training and specialized crews that are becoming harder to find as drilling picks up after a couple of lean years. “In the last couple of year there’s been three times as many rigs in the industry than we needed,” said Lang. “Now it’s changing back again and we’re running just about 60 per cent right now. “We are trying to ramp up here. We’ve got the six rigs, but we can only run five right now due to shortage of qualified personnel. We’re having to pay our guys a winter bonus to keep them to keep up to our needs for winter. “Everyone is totally out of experienced help right now. Over the last couple of slow years, a lot of people went overseas or to different careers and they are not coming back. “With two or three super singles, we would have a lot more guys trained up. It’s easier to take a guy from a super single to a conventional than it is the other way around. “It’s a lot more complex to operate, but the guys that go to it don’t want to go back to a conventional. It’s like working on a Cadillac. It’s a lot easier handling all your equipment,” Lang said.

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Kindersley sustains Tempco and its rig builder Eric Lang, general manager of Tempco Drilling in Nisku, was eager to talk about Rig 4 that he designed and built several years after joining the company in 1983. Rig 4 was built starting in 1996 with assistance from Big Sky Fabrication & Welding in Kindersley.

Nisku, Alta. – You can take the boy out of Saskatchewan, but you can’t take Saskatchewan out of the boy – especially when it comes to work. This old adage holds true for Eric Lang, the general manager and a partner in Tempco Drilling Company that was launched in Kindersley in 1980 and moved to Nisku in 1995. Lang was born and raised on a farm near Tramping Lake which is close to Kindersley, and he continues to make hay for Tempco Drilling in that area with his expertise in rig design, fabrication, and rig management with six rigs to deploy. He recently plowed his attention into the conversion of Tempco’s newest conventional rig – Rig 6 – built in 2007, and converted to a top drive, super single in 2010. The new Rig 6 drilled more than 40 shallow horizontal wells in the Kindersley area from July to year-end 2010. Lang is also supervising the ongoing conversion of Rig 5 in Nisku for service in the Kindersley area by this spring. His masterpiece and pride and joy is Rig 4 that he designed and started to build in Kindersley in 1996 about the same time he became a partner in Tempco. He joined the company in 1983. “That was something I always wanted to do – to design and build my own type of single,” said Lang. “My partners in Calgary asked me what I wanted to do and that’s what I told them I wanted to do. “I talked to the owners of Big Sky Steel Fabricators in Kindersley and they had some good people there. That’s why we decided to build it there because we knew the guys and what they could do for us. “We built the derrick. We built the rig right from scratch. We brought a few parts out of Nisku the drawworks and the mud pump and that – I assembled everything down there. “It’s been a good rig. It’s been a great rig for light oil to heavy oil and gas rigging. It was a very efficient rig to move. It is beefy and tough, and it’s drilled a lot of wells. Most of the guys who started on that rig are still there,” Lang said. Rig 4 just happened to be parked at Nisku when the Pipeline News dropped by for a chat during the Christmas holidays. “That’s special,” beamed Lang about his creation. “That’s my first jewel that I built. It’s been a good rig. “We built Rigs 5 and 6 off of it – with the design. It’s a beefy rig that you can pull a lot more and drill a lot deeper with. It’s a heavier setup for heavy oil and a lot of that directional work that we have been doing. “They are an easy moving rig. The truckers like moving them because they are so simple.” Tempco uses the services of Morley Muldoon Transport in Wainwright for a lot of rig moves into the Kindersley area, along with K&C Oilfield Hauling Ltd. in the Lloydminster and Edam areas. A few days after the interview, Rig 4 was moved to the Alberta oilsands where it will work until spring breakup. It will then see action drilling for heavy oil in the Lloydminster area over the summer. ɸ Page C22

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"You need a drilling company to supply your farming habit." – Eric Lang Tempco Drilling

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Plans to convert rig to a super single ɺ Page C21 Lang says plans are afoot to eventually convert Rig 4 to a super single for the type of shallow horizontal drilling that is in demand especially in the Kindersley area. Lang knows a lot about rigs as he began his career as a roughneck in the late ’70s working on triple rigs in the Edson, Alta., area. “I wanted to be closer to home and farm so I got on the smaller rigs in Kindersley and kind of stuck it out here and worked on the farm,” he said. Asked why he didn’t stick with farming, Lang said, “You need a drilling company to supply your farming habit. “It was easier to go work on a rig. You make a pretty good living in the oilpatch. You can ﬁnd work when there is no work if you want to work. “That’s one good thing about that Kindersley

area. It might be dead but there is always something going on. If they are not drilling they are servicing, so the oilpatch never shuts right down.” When the oilﬁeld around Kindersley slowed down in the ’90s, Tempco moved its operational base to Nisku to be closer to their supply and manufacturing centre. “It’s a good location for us,” he said. “It’s only three and a half hours to most of our work in Saskatchewan and for our work north of here. It’s kind of a central distribution area for all of the drilling contractors. “We do all of our repairs here, and we build most of our own rigs,” added Lang. “We build them from scratch here. That way we get what we want. “It’s works out a little cheaper in the long run to use our own men. If our guys aren’t working in the ﬁeld, we put them to work in the shop to keep them

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employed. A labour storage means they can only run ﬁve of their six rigs. The super single rigs that Tempco is building are high-tech multiple purpose rigs that can handle specialty drilling such as steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) oil wells without comprising speed. Lang says there are improved 2011 is starting oﬀ busy along with improved rig rates. “We just keep getting better equipment all the time also,” he said. “The shallow heavy oil and the SAGD will ramp up more and more all the time here too.”

Emerge funds an ambitious drilling program Calgary – Emerge Oil & Gas Inc. will go a drilling tear in 2011 on multiple fronts with its $75 million operating budget in place with most of the money earmarked for drilling, completions and well equipping. The Calgary based company plans to drill 80 net wells on various properties including 70 net locations this year on its core Lloydminster area, primarily on the Saskatchewan side. The Lloydminster plan will target multizone heavy oil within the Mannville formation. Emerge also plans to drill the ﬁrst four to six wells on its farm-in lands in its Reward/Ear Lake/ Macklin area targeting Waseca, McLaren, Lloydminster, Colony and Birdbear prospects. The company plans to drill a further four to six wells in the Coronation area of Alberta this year targeting the Viking formation, where

Emerge has identified a total of 41 locations on its lands in the emerging Viking light oil play. Of the remaining budget, approximately 20 per cent is expected to be allocated to undeveloped land acquisitions and seismic. Ten per cent is expected to be directed toward facilities and infrastructure projects. Emerge completed its 2010 drilling program in late December resulting in a total 2010 program of 66 (66 net) wells drilled at a 98 per cent success rate. Emerge also focused its fourth quarter capital program on facilities and gathering systems with approximately $8 million invested in disposal sites, intra-field water flowlines and central battery expansion, all designed to reduce 2011 operating costs. Emerge exited 2010 with field production of approximately 6,600 boepd, weighted 97 per cent toward oil.

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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Novus ¿nds light Viking oil near Dodsland to its liking Focused Asset Base ALBERTA

SASKATCHEWAN

Wembley W (Halfway Oil)

Grande Prairie

Oil

Wapiti

Gas

(Cardium Oil & Dunvegan Gas)

Edmonton Saskatoon

Calgary

Dodsland (Viking Oil)

Regina

Roncott

(Bakken Oil)

Novus Energy will continue its aggressive drilling program into the Viking formation near Dodsland, Sask. this year using limited entry fracking that signiÀcantly boosted its Viking production in 2010. Image submitted

By Geoff Lee Calgary – Novus Energy Inc., a Calgarybased junior oil and gas company, hopes to end 2011 awash in oil as it did in 2010 from light Viking oil production in the Dodsland area of Saskatchewan.

The company found success with limited entry fracking in the Viking in 2010 which is based on simultaneously fracking several intervals at once through increased pumping rates. Drilling plans for 2011 call for a continuation of this type

of fracking in its Dodsland wells. Novus will typically frac 12 to 14 intervals over two stages using cross linked water heated to 55 Celsius in a 600-metre lateral section of a horizontal well using monobore technology.

The company will also complete a Bak-

ken oil well in 2011 that was drilled in 2010 in the Roncott area of Saskatchewan along with two Halfway oil wells in the Wembley area of Alberta. Novus reported in mid January it achieved its 2010 production target with approximately 2,050 boepd with a 66 per cent mix of oil and liquids. Viking oil production from Dodsland spiked from approximately 30 barrels of oil per day in 2010 to approximately 1,095 bopd at year-end. The company’s fourth quarter production in 2010 is estimated to be approximately 1,525 boepd with oils and liquids comprising an estimated 62 per cent of the total production. The production

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Oilsands operators to Edmonton – Seven major oil companies with operations in the Athabasca oilsands of northern Alberta have come together to advance the art and science of tailings management. Canadian Natural Resources, Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, Syncrude Canada Ltd., Teck Resources and Total E&P Canada announced plans on Dec. 13 to share research and development relating to tailings. The move comes following the release of Directive 74 guidelines from the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) of Alberta last August on the management of tailings for oilsands mining schemes. Directive 74 requires operators to reduce the accumulation of tailings by capturing fine particles, that would otherwise remain suspended in tailings ponds, and placing them in a deposit that can be walked on. “The important message is that the industry takes tailings very seriously, and it makes sense to pool our efforts to make research more effective,” said Laura Bishop, Imperial Oil’s external relations adviser about the collaborative plan. “We believe this co-operation is a key step toward finding solutions.” Each company has pledged to share its existing tailings research and technology, and to remove intellectual property barriers to collaboration on future tailings research and development. “The issue is not whether we can manage tailings – the issue is whether we can do it better,” said John Broadhurst, vice-president of Shell’s Oil Sands development, during the announcement held at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “We believe that this relationship is a key step towards tailings solutions that will allow us to accelerate the pace of reclamation using the most advanced environmental measures.” Shell Canada Energy is a majority owner with Chevron Canada Ltd. and Marathon Oil Sands L.P. in the Athabasca Oil Sands project. Last August, Shell launched its latest tailings technology called Atmospheric Fines Drying (AFD) on a commercial scale field demonstration at the company’s Muskeg River mine, 70 km north of Fort McMurray. Shell has invested more than $26 million in the project, and is confident its AFD technology could result in a fine tailings deposit which releases water and gains strength in weeks. The ERCB conditionally approved Shell’s tailings management for Mukeg River in September 2010, noting Shell would not be able to meet the annual fine

Bradley Wambolt, director of Tailings Reduction Operations (TRO) for Suncor Energy look over an area of oilsands mine tailings solidiÀed by the company’s TRO process. Photos submitted

tailings reduction requirements until a consolidated tailings plant was built and operational by 2012. The ERCB is attempting to allow oil sands operators sufficient time to design and construct necessary industrial facilities which take into account each project’s specific geological and technical requirements in order for them to comply with Directive 74. Oil sands operators covered by Directive 74 must also specify dates for the construction, use and closure of tailings ponds. Imperial Oil meanwhile, is forging ahead to start up its Kearl Oil Sands development in late 2012 and is looking forward to collaborating with other producers on new tailings solutions. The ERCB also approved Imperial’s tailings management plan conditionally, noting Kearl would not achieve Directive 74 annual targets for up to the first six years of production (2012-2018). “Imperial certainly recognizes the importance of Directive 74, and we support the spirit and the intent which is to reduce the amount of fine tailings that are stored in an above ground structure rather than moving them toward final reclamation sooner,” said Imperial spokesperson Pius Rolheiser. ɸ Page C25

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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pool tailings know-how In the TRO process, mature Àne tailings are pumped out of a settling pond and moved to a facility where they’re injected with a polymer solution.

ɺ Page C24 Imperial has been directed to exceed the Directive 74 annual fine tailings reduction requirements following March 31, 2018 when it is to begin to treat tailings with its new Tailings from Solvent Recovery Unit (TSRU). Imperial is confident its TSRU technology will help it to meet the guidelines of Directive 74 at Kearl. “We continue to review and assess all commercially proven technologies and techniques,” said Rolheiser who added “we will continue to work with the Board (ERCB) toward production at the end of 2012.” The Kearl project, located about 70 km north of Fort McMurray, will initially produce about 110,000 barrels per day of bitumen. Kearl will use a proprietary paraffinic froth treatment (PFT) process to produce dry, solids-free bitumen that will be blended with diluents and shipped by pipeline to North American refineries. Tailings will be treated in the TSRU unit. With the addition of flocculent (chemical additive), tailings streams will be partially dewatered in a large process vessel called a thickener. Fines are chemically glued together in the thickener to form larger particles to be placed in shallow deposits for addition dewatering and drying. Going forward, Imperial plans to work with other operators to further refine the technical application of thickeners to reclaim tailings. “Basically this groundbreaking agreement expands cooperation on tailings research and eliminates intellectual property barriers with a view to develop better solutions faster and accelerate the pace of reclamation,” said Bishop. “Collaboration isn’t new among the seven companies that are involved. We have enjoyed collaboration in this important area of tailings research in the past. “In this model, we are calling it a precedent because everything will be shared without barriers.” Alberta currently has an inventory of 840 million cubic metres of fluid fine tailings that require long term containment. The ERCB estimates tailings ponds cover approximately 170 square km in northeastern Alberta. Syncrude Canada has been the hardest hit of all seven companies by negative environmental publicity over its tailings ponds.

An Alberta court levied a $3-million fine in October, 2010 against Syncrude for the death of 1,606 mallards on its tailings ponds in 2008. One week after the court fine, more than 230 ducks died after landing on Syncrude’s Mildred Lake Settling Basin near Fort McMurray. It’s the company’s largest pond, holding 220 million cubic metres of tailings liquid. Syncrude is taking a multi-pronged approach to manage fine tailings with the development of centrifuge, technology, water capping tailings technology and composite tailings. “We’ve heard from stakeholders that they would like to see us reclaiming tailings faster and we are responding to that,” said Syncrude. “Reclamation is an integral part of meeting the expectations of Canadians for responsible development of the oil sands.” The other companies in the group are also working on new tailings management methods, and have agreed on the principles to guide research collaboration. “The first step is to have that agreement signed, and then we will be establishing a steering committee that will be setting the priorities and the agenda,” said Bishop. “This will take place as we go forward.”

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Oilsands Quest in league with China trip Calgary – Oilsands Quest Inc. may find a madein-China investment solution to fund the development of its core bitumen assets at Axe Lake in northern Saskatchewan and adjacent properties at Wallace Creek and Raven Ridge in Alberta. Executives from Oilsands Quest joined the Beijing leg of a 12-day energy trade mission to China and Japan led by Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd in mid-January with their eye on potential investors. “We don’t expect anything to come of this trip,” said Garth Wong, chief financial officer of Oilsands Quest the day before joining the delegation to China. “It’s very much preliminary meetings to get peo-

ple familiar with the assets. It’s an opportunity for us to get larger exposure to what we think are pretty good oilsands assets.” The trip is part of an ongoing review of strategic and ﬁnancial options for the company that put its key steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) pilot project at Axe Lake on hold until new investors step forward. Capital investment is needed quickly for a fall 2011 start-up that could lead to a 35,000 to 40,000 barrel a day commercial project by 2017. The company believes its resources could support long-term projects at Axe Lake, Wallace Creek and Raven Ridge with the potential to produce a total of 100,000 barrels a day of bitumen. Recoverable resources are within the range of previously disclosed “high” estimates of contingent resources of 474 million barrels of bitumen at Axe Lake, and 320 million barrels of bitumen at Raven Ridge. The recoverable resources for Wallace Creek are believed to be near the McDaniel &Associates Consultants “best” estimate of 98 million barrels of bitumen contingent resources. “Our message,” said Wong, “is we’ve got some high quality assets and we have the potential for 100,000 barrels of day of economic resource. We are looking for investors that can help us develop these resources. “What we are trying to do is expose our assets and work with the Ministry of Energy in Saskatchewan. “They want to see the assets developed, and we are in the middle of a strategic alternative process. We are looking for investors and our goals are aligned. “I think that it’s important to both of us. We are the only oilsands player in Saskatchewan, and they are very interested in seeing this project going forward. Our interests are very much aligned,” Wong said. “We thought it would be a good idea if we went together and presented the assets, and see if we can

find some potential investment in China. “We are looking for investors that can help us develop those resources,” said Wong who notes the Axe Lake and Wallace Creek areas are large projects with development price tags in excess of $1 billion each. “In the short term, we are looking for financing for Axe Lake and Wallace Creek. In the longer term, we are looking for investors to help us to get to the commercial development stage,” he said. The company ended 2010 with no debt and sufficient finances to carry out planned activities until the fall of 2011. Oilsands Quest is currently commencing a winter drill program of 11 exploration wells at Wallace Creek funded by approximately US$ 12 million from the November 2010 sale of flow-through shares. “We are really happy with the results we got last year, and we want to do additional exploratory drilling this year,” said Wong. The drilling could help with the planning of a 35,000 barrel per day project at Wallace Creek in 2019. Plans are also afoot for a 30,000 barrel per day SAGD project at Raven Ridge with a start-up target of 2021. Asked about their numerous licences and permits in Saskatchewan, Wong says the company plans to convert the prospective areas of Axe Lake to a lease. “We will likely relinquish the remaining property, whether they are permits or licences on their next anniversary date,” he said. “We see the other areas as being less prospective.” Meanwhile, Oilsands Quest is still trying to find a buyer for its non-core assets including its Pasquia Hills oil shale properties covering 489,730 acres in southeast Saskatchewan. The Eagles Nest oil sands lease covering 22,773 acres in the Athabasca oil sands northwest of Fort McMurray is also for sale.

Career Opportunities 3A & 1A Drivers/ Owner Operators/ Mechanics

Brady Oilfield Services LP. Weyburn, Halbrite and surrounding area. OilÀeld Safety CertiÀcates an asset but not necessary. BeneÀts package available.

Mail or Fax Resume and Drivers Abstract P.O. Box 271 Midale, Sask. S0C 1S0 Fax: (306) 458-2768

Employment Opportunity

is an industry leader in Safety Services and is currently seeking

Safety Personnel to keep up with increasing customer demands.

If you are interested in becoming part of the Target Team and enjoying our growth with us, let us know!

Please forward resume with copies of tickets to: resumes@targetsafety.ca or fax to 780-870-5359 CAREER OPPORTUNITY

OilÀeld/Pipeline StafÀng Services

WorkSource Solutions Solving your Work Force needs!

Relocation Across Canada For more information: Ph: (306) 979-8210 sylvia@w-s-s.ca Ofﬁces in: Winnipeg, Saskatoon & Regina

www.mtmenergy.ca

Diversity - Acceptance - Respect

Grit Industries Inc. is currently looking for

Apprentice / Journeyman Electrician Compensation will be based on experience. Please send resume and salary expectations to: Janice Van Berkel, Human Resources Manager via email at: jvanberkel@gritindustries.com, or via fax at: (780) 808.8415 We thank all applicants for your interest. However, only those considered for an interview will be contacted.

GRIT

INDUSTRIES

WWW.GRITINDUSTRIES.COM

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

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Career Opportunities Crew Foreman

Experienced FOR LLOYDMINSTER AREA

MUST: â&#x20AC;˘ Have Valid Drivers License & Be A Team Player â&#x20AC;˘ Safety Tickets â&#x20AC;˘ Picker & Bobcat Experience An Asset Câ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s OFFERS: â&#x20AC;˘ Top Wages â&#x20AC;˘ Benefits Package â&#x20AC;˘ Performance Bonuses â&#x20AC;˘ Scheduled Days Off â&#x20AC;˘ Opportunity For Advancement â&#x20AC;˘ C.O.R. Safety Program â&#x20AC;˘ AB & SK B31.3 Q.C. â&#x20AC;˘ Premium Equipment

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DUTIES: â&#x20AC;˘ Daily Operation Of A Light Picker Truck â&#x20AC;˘ Pipe-fitting & Construction

OILFIELD SERVICE LTD.

CONSULTING & CONSTRUCTION

Apply in confidence to: Fax (780) 808-2273

Integrity Maintenance is looking for

Crew Foremen & Laborers Must have valid tickets Please fax resume to: 1-306-453-2298 Attn: Mark Slykhuis Or call: 1-306-577-3311

Fax: (780) 872-5239

Now hiring:

2nd, 3rd, 4th year apprentices and Journeyman Electricans. Work involves commercial, industrial and residential electrical wiring installations. We offer competitive wages and beneĂ&#x20AC;ts (Health, Dental, RRSP) Forward resume by: fax: 306-634-3169 e-mail: bobs.electric@sasktel.net or drop off in person at: 81 Escana Street.

Heavy Duty Mechanic Required Successful applicant must have a Heavy Duty Journeyman Mechanic ticket. Duties will include: Heavy Duty Equipment, Semis, Vehicles & Trailers. SGI Certification would be an asset. We offer competitive wages and excellent benefits.

For interviews call: Mike: 461-8881 or Brad: 461-8153

No phone calls please.

Bobâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Electric Contracting Ltd. EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

Mud Technician Required All resumĂŠs can be emailed to applyinfo@ceslp.ca or faxed to (306) 453-4404

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www.suretuf.com

PLASMA TABLE OPERATOR Applicants must have welding background. Driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s license required. Reliable, team player. Wages depend on experience. BeneďŹ ts available. Performance bonuses. Only those to be interviewed will be contacted. Apply in conďŹ dence to: Fax (780) 808 - 2273

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PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Technicoil Corporation EUROPUMP® Systems Inc. is a rapidly growing company providing Downhole PC Pumps, Surface Drive Units and Advanced Products to the oil and gas industry. We are currently seeking talented individuals for:

ENGINEERING MANAGER The candidate should have a minimum of 5-10 years of Oilfield experience with a degree in Engineering or Engineering Technology and a proven track record. This position includes a lead role in the following: r 3FTFBSDI BOE %FWFMPQNFOU r 1SPEVDU %FWFMPQNFOU BOE %PDVNFOUBUJPO r .BOVGBDUVSJOH BOE 1SPDFTT 0QUJNJ[BUJPO

PURCHASING MANAGER The candidate should have a minimum of 5-10 years related industry experience with a proven track record. This position includes a lead role in the following: r $PPSEJOBUJOH "MM 1VSDIBTJOH "DUJWJUJFT r 1SPEVDU 4PVSDJOH r 1SPEVDU $PTU BOE 1SJDJOH "OBMZTJT r *OWFOUPSZ .BOBHFNFOU EUROPUMP® offers a refreshing work environment, competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package. Interested applicants may submit their resume to: Email: Careers@europump.ca Fax: 780 872 5967 Mail: PO Box 10929, Lloydminster, AB T9V 3B2

Our COIL WELL SERVICE DIVISION is hiring EXPERIENCED INDIVIDUALS with Coil Tubing and Service Rig experience. Class 1 or 3A required. Our PUMPING AND STIMULATION SERVICE DIVISION is hiring EXPERIENCED INDIVIDUALS with experience in Coil Support Pumping, Acidizing, Remedial Cementing and Nitrogen. Class 1 or 3A required. Technicoil has an opening for a SAFETY COORDINATOR. Preference given to applicants with previous rig experience and training in Safety...WHMIS/TDG/HOS/PST/Fall Protection. At Technicoil there is room for advancement, excellent wages, benefits, and on the job bonuses. Please submit your resume and current safety tickets: H2S, PST, First Aid, 5 year Driver’s Abstract to: In person: 5400-39139 Hwy 2A Blindman Industrial Park Red Deer County, AB T4S 2B3 Fax: 403-309-3320 Email: employment@technicoilcorp.com

WWW.TECHNICOILCORP.COM Only those selected for an interview will be contacted

Thank you for your interest.

www.europump.ca

Hiring for All Locations

Canyon is the fastest growing Fracturing Company in Western Canada. If your looking for a career with a leading organization that promotes TEAM WORK, SUCCESS and INNOVATION then we’re looking for YOU!

Medicine Hat - Estevan - Grande Prairie - Red Deer We’re Looking for qualified people for the following positions: x x x x x x x x x

Frac Supervisors Crew Cabbers Data Van Operators Blender Operators Chemical Operators Fluid Pump Operators Iron Truck Operators Bulk Operators Coil Operators

We Want YOU to Join Weatherford Weatherford Canada Partnership, provides a wide range of oil and gas services to national, integrated and independent oil and gas companies around the world, using fit-for-purpose technologies. We are a dynamic, growing organization and offer a competitive salary, benefits with no waiting period and a matched RRSP plan.

#11000000B9

• SENIOR WELL TESTING OPERATOR #11000000B8

Self motivated Have a clean Class 1 License Safety Focused Driven to succeed Willing to work flexible hours

• SENIOR WELL TESTING SUPERVISOR #11000000B7

Why Canyon? Canyon is a dynamic, rapidly growing company powered by motivated successful people. Canyon’s business continues to be conducted with integrity and consistently reflects the value of our diverse workforce, customers and suppliers. Our premium compensation package contains an industry leading benefits plan, including RRSP matching and a confidential employee and family assistance program. If you value success achieved in an ethical environment, built on strong relationships, please contact us.

Please submit your resume with current driver’s abstract by: Email: hr@canyontech.ca or fax: (403) 528-3914 We thank all applicants; however only those selected for an initial interview will be contacted .

FRACTURING ACIDIZING COILED TUBING CEMENTING

at our Weyburn location

• WELL TESTING OPERATOR

Applicants must be: x x x x x

Due to Increasing Growth and Expansion

Entry Level Operators will be provided hands-on training. Qualified candidates must possess a Class 5 driver's license, provide a driver's abstract and pass a preemployment drug/alcohol test. H2S and First Aid certification an asset.

Please apply with resume and drivers abstract to fax: 306-842-0676 or apply online.

Apply online at

We a t h e r f o r d . j o b s

www.canyontech.ca x

DRILLING / EVALUATION / COMPLETION / PRODUCTION / INTERVENTION

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

s ’ t a Truck Drivers P OFFROAD TRANSPORT LTD. HELP WANTED • 3A or 1A License • Loader experience an asset • Resume & drivers abstract required • Competitive wages • Benefit package available

Drop off resume at:

314 - 6th Street, Estevan or fax resume to: 634-4643

HIRING IMMEDIATELY • $3,000 base salary + Job bonus + Living allowance + BeneÀts package • No out of town travel • Minimum Class 3 required

C29

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY Applications are being accepted for:

SERVICE MANAGER For Our Lloydminster Location Oilfield Pump Knowledge an Asset

Applicants must be organized & efficient, be motivated, be a team player and work with minimal supervision in a fast growing environment. We offer competitive wages and benefits package.

Please forward resume by February 15, 2011 to:

Kelro Pump & Mechanical Ltd. P.O. Box 10989 Lloydminster, AB T9V 3B3 Fax: 780-875-7441 E-mail: gord@kelro.com

Call Chris: (306) 741-8152

Vacancy Heavy Duty Technicians Frontier Peterbilt Sales Ltd. is an enterprising dealership for large trucks and trailers based in Saskatoon, Regina, Lloydminster and Estevan. Due to continued growth and an expansion of our Lloydminster branch, we are looking for full-time 2nd year, 3rd year or 4th year apprentices and Journeyman Service Technicians for our Lloydminster location. We require people that are meticulous, results-driven and customer service oriented. We off an attractive remuneration that includes an excellent salary and an extensive employee beneÀt package. We thank all applicants for their interest. Please submit your resume by fax, e-mail or in person to: Deb Purdy, Human Resources Manager Frontier Peterbilt Sales Ltd. 303 - 50th St East, Saskatoon, SK S7K 6C1 Fax: 306-244-2879 Email: careers@frontierpeterbilt.com No phone calls please. While we appreciate all applications we receive, we advise that only candidates under consideration will be contacted. Thank you for your interest in Frontier Peterbilt Sales Ltd.

We thank all interested candidates, however, only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

VACANCY HEAVY-DUTY MECHANIC Frontier Peterbilt Sales Ltd is looking for full-time Service Technicians in Estevan to work on the premier product in the industry and the newest dealership in the city. We have opportunities for Service Technicians, from 3rd year apprentices to Journeymen. Skilled Journeyman Technicians will earn the top dealership wage in Southern Saskatchewan ranging from $32.00 to $39.00 per hour. We require people that are meticulous, results-driven and customer service oriented. We offer excellent pay as well as an extensive employee beneÀt package and the opportunity to progress within the Company. QualiÀed applicants are encouraged to apply in person at the dealership to Jerrod Tedford, Service Manager or by email or fax to: Human Resources Department E-Mail careers@frontierpeterbilt.com Fax 306-244-2879 No phone calls please. While we appreciate all applications we receive, we advise that only candidates under consideration will be contacted. Thank you for your interest in Frontier Peterbilt Sales Ltd.

VACANCY Used Truck Sales Representative - Estevan We have an exciting opportunity for a Used Truck Sales Person in Estevan. In this position you will be using your sales and marketing skills to forge strong relationships with customers who rely on your expertise and service for their success. You will be qualifying and serving a wide range of customers with different needs. Your approach begins with genuine care to understand the challenges faced by your customers. Your key initiatives will be to assist your customers in identifying underlying issues and to recommend viable solutions. During your Àrst year, you would develop a plan to aggressively improve performance, implement strategies to satisfy customer needs, forge relationships, and develop a quality customer database. You are an enterprising team player who enjoys healthy competition and collaboration. You are conÀdent knowing your long-term success begins with the success and satisfaction of your customers. We offer an attractive compensation package that correlates with performance. Are you up to the challenge? If you have the desire and skills to make this happen we want to speak with you.

Please submit your resume & cover letter to: Email: careers@frontierpeterbilt.com Fax: (306) 244-2879 No phone calls please. While we appreciate all applications we receive, we advise that only candidates under consideration will be contacted. Thank you for your interest in Frontier Peterbilt Sales Ltd.

TRICAN WELL SERVICE LTD. is one of Canada’s fastest growing well service companies, providing a comprehensive array of specialized products, equipment and services utilized in drilling, completion, stimulation and reworking of oil and gas wells in the Canadian and International marketplace. At Trican, we base our recruitment practises on the belief that a company’s greatest asset is its people. Trican provides services in Fracturing, Cementing, Acidizing, Coiled Tubing, Nitrogen and related services in our ¿eld bases ranging from Fort Nelson, British Columbia to Estevan, Saskatchewan.

WE ARE CURRENTLY HIRING: • SUPERVISORS • OPERATORS • DRIVERS • FRAC HANDS • HEAVY DUTY DIESEL MECHANIC • BULK PLANT OPERATOR • NITROGEN OPERATORS

• 2ND YEAR APPRENTICE HEAVY DUTY DIESEL MECHANIC A valid Class 1 required as well as prior experience in the above pressure pumping operations. Class 3 and selected Class 5 licenses will be accepted. On the job training from the ground up. Seasonal positions available. Trican offers a dynamic work environment and a competitive salary and bene¿t package. Please apply in person to any of Trican’s ¿eld bases or forward your resume and references, in con¿dence to:

Trican Well Service Ltd. Box 849, Estevan, SK S4A 2A7 34-1 Fax: (306) 636-2669 • Email: r¿sk@trican.ca

Essential Coil & Stimulation Services is a company recognized for safety and excellence with in the oil and gas industry. We strive to provide a good working relationship with our customers. Currently we provide services throughout Alberta and Southern Saskatchewan. Essential Coil offers competitive wages, scheduled days off, group beneÀt plan and employee savings plan. If you are an energetic team player with superb attention to detail and strong communication skills, we invite you to apply for the following positions at our Weyburn location:

Coil Tubing Operators Coil Tubing Helpers Class 1 driver’s license is preferred, but all class of drivers are welcome to apply. Previous oil Àeld experience & valid tickets are an asset Email or fax your resume & a current driver’s abstract to: tschwab@essentialcoil.com Fax: 306-842-8906

Grow G row with with

StimSol

Excellent Opportunities are now available with StimSol. We are an aggressive, growing oilÀeld service company offering technical well services to the Energy Industry. We are specialists in the areas of Solvents, Acidizing, Pressure Truck and Nitrogen Pumping Services. Regional Branch OfÀces are located in Blackfalds, Grande Prairie, Red Earth Creek, AB and Estevan, SK.

Positions Available: Nitrogen Operators / Supervisors l Chemical Technician Acidizing Supervisors / Operators l Sales Associates Pump Truck Operators l Mechanic Pressure Truck Operators l Material Specialist Join StimSol and enjoy the beneÀts of a small company atmosphere, with the safety, security and professionalism of the larger companies. Compensation includes: Excellent Wages, Regular Days-Off Schedule, Paid Training and a Comprehensive BeneÀts Program. Preference is given to Class 1 or 3 drivers with a clear abstract. If you have Service Rig or other OilÀeld experience and are looking for change, contact us! Permanent and Seasonal opportunities are available. Fax your resume to 1-780-649-2673 or email jobs@stimsol.com

StimSol Canada Inc. a Western Co.

C30

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Career Opportunities

Calfrac has grown from a small oilfield services company to an international leader in fracturing and coiled tubing well services.

Rotational Opportunities As a key part of our strategy, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve developed a rotational schedule for our Canadian operations. The 3-weeks-in, 2-weeks-out field positions currently available are:

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On your application, please include this code: CWS001 Call us: 1-877-908-FRAC (3722) Fax us: 1-403-234-6655 Apply online: www.calfrac.com/careers

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

C31

Resources Guide lancew@aspentrailer.com www.aspentrailer.com

JUSTIN WAPPEL - Division Manager

RICK CORMIER Manager

Box 609 Carlyle, SK S0C 0R0 www.truetorq.com

Aspen Custom Trailers 6017-84th Street S.E. Calgary, AB T2C 4S1

Bus: (306) 634-8084 Cell: (306) 577-8833 Fax: (306) 453-6075 ttorq@hotmail.com 25-tfn

â&#x20AC;˘ 1 Day Incident Investigation Workshop â&#x20AC;˘ Industrial Supervisor Training

401 Hwy. #4 S. Biggar, Saskatchewan PO Box 879 S0K 0M0 Ph (306) 948-5262 Fax (306) 948-5263 Cell (306) 441-4402 Toll Free 1-800-746-6646 Email: jwappel@envirotank.com www.envirotank.com

Lance Wotherspoon Regional Sales Manager

[T] 403 236 2244 [F] 403 236 8829 [C] 403 813 6319 [Toll Free] 877 236 2244

a l t u s g e o m a t i c s . c o m

We can customize these courses to the clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. Visit us at: www.dbsafetysolutions.com

Specializing in well site and pipeline surveys

D.B. Safety Solutions Inc. Don Beahm CRSP, CHSC Weyburn, Sask. Phone: 306-842-3584 â&#x20AC;˘ Cell: 306-861-7093

Yorkton 306.783.4100

Swift Current 306.773.7733

Edmonton 800.465.6233

Weyburn 306.842.6060

Lloydminster 780.875.6130

Calgary 866.234.7599

Regina 800.667.3546

Medicine Hat 403.528.4215

Grande Prairie 780.532.6793

Box 208

Estevan, SK

461-8471 â&#x20AC;˘ 461-8472 â&#x20AC;˘ 461-8473 Call: Clinton Gibbons

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Maintenance

Cell numbers: 483-8024, 483-7024, 483-8148 Home: 486-2143 â&#x20AC;˘ Fax: 486-4855

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Box 12 Frobisher, SK. S0C 0Y0 merv_and_deb@xplornet.ca

OIL / INDUSTRIAL / AGRICULTURAL / AUTOMOTIVE

352-7668

TOLL FREE 1-877-778-7460

Bulk Agency

Lloyd Lavigne â&#x20AC;˘ Kirk Clarkson Owners/Managers

WEEKDAYS 7:30 A.M. - 5:30 P.M. SATURDAYS 9 A.M. - 1 P.M.

STOCKING ENGINE PARTS

1404 SCARTH ST., REGINA, SASK.

6506 - 50th Avenue Lloydminster, AB

Phone: (780) 875-6880

5315 - 37th Street Provost, AB T0B 3S0

Phone: (780) 753-6449

website. www.continentalengine.ca FAX 525-8222

continentaleng@sasktel.net

Bully Blast & Paint Services Ltd. â&#x20AC;˘ Shop & Field Service â&#x20AC;˘ Structural Steel â&#x20AC;˘ Tank Linings â&#x20AC;˘ Spool Coating Your Sandblasting, Painting & Coating Specialists with over 20 yrs. experience in the industry

ISNET, Comply Works and Secor Compliant Cell: (306) 461-9676 â&#x20AC;˘ Bus.: (306) 457-2264 P.O. Box 54 â&#x20AC;˘ Benson, SK â&#x20AC;˘ SOC 0L0 bullyblasting@sasktel.net

Fax: (780) 875-7076

24 Hour Service Specializing in Industrial & Oilfield Motors

Saskatchewan Owned & Operated

â&#x20AC;˘ Pressure Vessels â&#x20AC;˘ Well Testers â&#x20AC;˘ Frac Recovery â&#x20AC;˘ Wellbore Bleedoff â&#x20AC;˘ Ball Catchers â&#x20AC;˘ 400 bbl Tanks â&#x20AC;˘ Rig Matting â&#x20AC;˘ Complete Trucking Services

Dale (306) 861-3635 â&#x20AC;˘ Lee (306) 577-7042 Lampman, Sask.

912 6th Street, Estevan

634-7275 Toll Free: 1-866-457-3776

PIPELINE NEWS February 2011

Design - Engineering - Manufacturing

C32

The Metaltek Team will take your ideas to the next level

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