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Arctic Millennium rig complete LADS rig successfully commissioned and tested, says NIED President Masakazu Okamura Kristen Nelson Petroleum News Editor-in-Chief
NIED LLC said June 4 that it has successfully commissioned and tested its new Arctic Millennium drilling system, formerly called the light automated drilling system or LADS.
First steel was cut for the rig in February 2001, Conrad Perry, NIED project manager, told Petroleum News June 4. The rig was expected to be drilling on the North Slope in 2002, but that timeline was not met.
Last October Masakazu Okamura, president of NIED, told Petroleum News the company had restructured the project and committed more than $3 million to complete construction and commissioning of the rig.
Okamura told Petroleum News June 4 that a new management team for the rig was assembled in November and the company has been concentrating on completing the rig.
Opportunities for using the Arctic Millennium rig are the next step, he said.
Drilling test well After completion, the rig was disassembled at the construction site in Brady, Texas, and moved a mile and a half to drill a water well. The six modules of the basic rig can be moved in various ways, depending on location, Perry said.
In Brady, NIED used a Caterpillar D8 with 300 horsepower to move the modules. The Brady test well will be converted to a water supply well for the city of Brady. “Drilling through chalk and hard limestones provided time for a significant shakedown of all systems,” the company said, including “automated control and hydraulic systems necessary to provide a step change in drilling safety.” Perry said the rig move went well, “a single D8 pulled our heaviest module which was the drill module, fairly easily,” including up a 6 degree grade hill.
And assembly at the water well site took about 26 hours, he said, compared to an estimated three days.
Once the derrick was up, he said, it took five hours to park the other modules.
NIED, a subsidiary of N-I Energy Development, describes the rig as a rapid deployment drilling system, and calls it “the first fully automated Arctic class drilling rig.”
Perry said NIED is estimating six crew members per tower plus a tool pusher. “With the complexity of the rig,” he said, “we’re heavy in electronic technicians and mechanics. We have one each per tower. … Multi-discipline type crew where people can handle different things.
The rig requires fewer people — thus reducing exposure to safety hazards. Its performance is equal to other rigs, Perry said: “We’re not touting it as being a rig that will trip faster, that will drill quicker.” Fast rig-up What the company is touting, however, is the fast rig-up time.
The time for moving and resetting the rig is “much shorter” than conventional rigs, Okamura said.
The fast set-up is one of the side benefits, Perry said: “It is a great development drilling rig. It’s a fantastic exploration rig.”
Typically an operator can only drill one North Slope winter exploration well, Perry said: for some $20 million they get one shot.
“Well for that amount — maybe a little bit more — you could have three shots” with the Arctic Millennium rig, he said, because of the very short rig-up time. One operator could drill three wells, or the rig could be shared among operators over a single winter exploration season.
But, “it’s not a compromise rig,” Perry said. “It’s a very powerful rig... (with) a million pound derrick, 4,500 horsepower worth of mud pumps if you want it. It’s a fully operational rig to do whatever you need.”
For North Slope development drilling, he said, the rig has a weight advantage in moves: you’re not moving 4 million pounds in one load. “Our biggest load is 800,000 pounds over 152 different tires.” Alaska, Sakhalin, Siberia Okamura said there are opportunities for the rig in Alaska, Sakhalin Island and Siberia. “This rig is suitable for Arctic areas,” he said. “There are lots of possibilities for us.”
The rig could be transported by sea, Perry said, but can also be moved in eight trips on a Russian Antonov 124 cargo plane. And, because of Jones Act shipping requirements, that would actually be cheaper, he said. For the North Slope, the rig would be flown into Fairbanks and trucked to the North Slope.
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