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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Doyon Drilling builds on its experience of working in the Arctic Drilling on the North Slope requires specialized drilling rigs, close attention to safety and sensitivity to the environment Alan Bailey PNA Contributing Writer
With 20 years of experience in Arctic drilling, a history of continuous technical innovation and an impressive safety record, Doyon Drilling Inc. maintains its leading position as a drilling contractor on the North Slope, says Ron Wilson, general manager of the company.
“A lot of us (in Doyon Drilling) have been here from the very beginning and have multiple years of Arctic experience, so we’re very in tune to the environment in drilling in Arctic conditions,” Wilson said.
Doyon first entered the drilling business in 1981 as a joint venture with Nugget Drilling Inc. The joint-venture company was called Doyon Drilling-JV. In 1993 Doyon bought out Nugget Drilling’s interests to form Doyon Drilling Inc., a 100 percent Alaska Native owned company.
The first self-propelled rig Back in 1981 Doyon Drilling-JV spearheaded the use of self-propelled rigs on the slope. The company’s built its first rig, called Rig 9, as a four-module, self-propelled design that was unique on the slope at that time.
Each rig module used its own system of drive wheels to move between wells on a well pad. Self-propulsion eliminated the time and cost of trucking the rig between locations.
“(Rig 9 could) make a well-to-well move in just a matter of a few minutes … rather than having trucks dismantle it and take anywhere from 12 hours to 20 hours,” Wilson said. “We’d drill anything from four to 16 wells on a pad in Kuparuk at that time and we would never have to have trucks come out to move the rigs around.”
Fewer modules Following its success with rig 9, Doyon Drilling-JV further increased rig-move efficiency by progressively reducing the number of individual modules that needed to be separated from each other during a move.
Rig 15, a two-module design for the Endicott Field, went into operation in 1986. Rig 14, a single-module design, started work in the Kuparuk field in 1987.
The Rig 15 design introduced some other refinements. In particular, its ground clearance enables the rig to move from well to well without having to dismantle the well housings — a feature that saved further time and money.
In another innovation, Rig 15 incorporated diesel/gas turbines, rather than conventional diesel engines — the use of gas from the Endicott field saved on fuel costs for the drilling operations.
“Endicott was located a long way from the main field, and rather than having diesel trucked out all the time and (with) all the gas they had at Endicott … we put these diesel/gas turbines on Rig 15,” Wilson said. “The first well was drilled with diesel, and then once we got gas we converted to where we just drilled with gas.”
Rig 14’s single module design reduced the size of the unit to where it was (and still is) the smallest footprint rig on the North Slope that can drill 15,000 foot wells. “What we tried to do was reduce the footprint of the rig, so that you didn’t have to build bigger well pads,” Wilson said.
In 1989 Doyon Drilling-JV built Rig 16, a single module rig for doing workovers. “(Rig 16) could move very quickly,” said Wilson. “You could lay the derrick down and raise it very quickly, compared to some other rigs — so it was a very efficient workover rig.”
Exploration rig In 1994 Doyon Drilling identified the need for an additional exploration rig on the slope. As a result, the company formed a joint venture with Parker Drilling to convert Parker Rig 141 for exploration use. In 1998 Doyon Drilling bought out Parker’s interest in Rig 141. Rig 141 consists of seven relatively light modules that are ideal for exploration work. The rig can move at up to 10 mph, compared with the relatively slow 2.5 mph of a self-propelled rig.
“What we had seen was the need for an exploration rig that could be rigged down and moved to locations fairly quickly, with lighter loads to get across ice bridges and things like that,” Wilson said. “It has great mobility for long moves and can also be rigged up in a short period of time — we’ve been able to knock out five (exploration) wells in a season.”
Rig 19 As part of a 1997 contract with ARCO to drill in the Alpine field Doyon Drilling upgraded its original Rig 9. In doing the upgrade, Doyon changed the name of the rig from Rig 9 to Rig 19.
The upgrade incorporated some of the design concepts from Rigs 14 and 16 — Doyon fitted a new, longer sub-base and increased the size of the derrick. “Basically what we did is reconfigure (the rig) … to where we could lay the derrick over … and move to a pad location with the derrick still on the sub-base,” Wilson said.
Design modifications also enable the rig to be used for extended-reach drilling. “We made it just a little bit bigger — 2000 horsepower, with a 1.2 million pound mast — to where we could position ourselves for future extended-reach drilling,” Wilson said.
Work schedules and training As well as pursuing technical innovation, Doyon Drilling has broken new ground in working with its employees. The company especially encourages local Alaska and Native hire.
Back in 1981, the company pioneered the use of a two weeks on, two weeks off work schedule, so that that its shareholder employees could enjoy more time with their families. “The normal rig schedules for drilling contractors at that time were two weeks on the slope and one week off, or four weeks on and two weeks off,” Wilson said.
The company has also pioneered a training program for new employees, in order to enable shareholders to work on the slope. “If you didn’t have oilfield experience it was pretty tough to get up there,” Wilson said.
Safety and the environment Doyon Drilling enjoys an outstanding safety record, thanks to intensive training, an incentive awards program and safe rig designs. The company has received numerous awards for safe and efficient operations and its lost-time accident rates consistently fall below national and state averages.
The company has also developed an environmental management system to safeguard the environment on the North Slope. “We have a system that we built specifically for our industry — we feel that’s pretty unique,” Wilson said.
Russ Douglass, Doyon Drilling’s environmental affairs director, said the environmental management system identifies environmental issues for each rig, communicates procedures for dealing with these issues and then ensures corrective actions for any problems that arise.
Environmental training also forms an integral part of the system, Douglass said.
“It’s been real successful, especially for the communications that we have between our customers and ourselves on the way we conduct and do business up there,” Douglass said. “We have a clear understanding of what the (environmental) requirements are.”
With its fleet of five state-of-the-art rigs, and with its commitment to safety and the environment, Doyon Drilling will continue to serve its customers by applying its extensive knowledge of Arctic drilling.
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