Whenever Marty Matthews drives by the oilwells near Rocky Mountain House or Vauxhall or Eckville, he gets a good feeling knowing how his invention contributes to a clean environment and saves oil companies money.

Actually, it’s a product line that he patented to prevent oil and gas production contaminants from ending up in farmers’ soil and our drinking water.

Matthews is the president of Adoil Inc., an Alberta-based company working with the oil industry to eliminate a pollution problem that’s been around since the late 1940s.

His company’s solutions are based on devices that are simple but astonishingly effective, and which can be installed in minutes by non-experts without tools.

Adoil’s Marty Matthews knows the drill when it comes to preventing common, slow wellhead leaks.

The Adoil Wellhead Skirt®, for example, is a containment device that fits securely around all makes and models of oilwell stuffing boxes, capturing all oil and produced saltwater that commonly cause ground-surface pollution and water-table contamination.

The unit is very economical – skirt, tank, hose and attachments start at about $600.

Then there’s Adoil’s Wellhead (H2S) Sour Jacket®. It performs the identical function and is equipped with an emissions detector to provide the oil producer with 24-hour monitoring of all harmful emissions that could escape unattended rural/remote sour wellsites.

Finally, there’s the Adoil Super Steam Metal Jacket® that is designed to prevent enhanced-recovery wellhead spills and protects against steam pressure/ bitumen packing blowouts. Working temperatures for the unit exceed 220° C.

“If every oil-producing company had my product on their oilwells, no oil or saltwater would be leaking on farmland,” Matthews says.

Adoil has made impressive headway since Matthews introduced the line18 months ago. Imperial Oil was so impressed it gave Adoil its first huge order to equip all of Imperial’s wells in the Rocky Mountain House area. ConocoPhillips Canada is also a big customer for its wells near Eckville and in the Vauxhall to Vulcan area.



“They’re really pro-active companies that have stepped up to become trend-setters,” Matthews says.

The line of wellhead skirts and jackets sprang from his experiences during 20 years of running a pumpjack inspection company.

On countless occasions, he saw the damage being done by oil and saltwater leaks around the pumpjacks.

Here’s the problem: Crude oil is found in subterranean reservoirs, typically with lots of saltwater. When crude is piped to the surface by a rod-pump oilwell, seals on the pumpjack are supposed to prevent oil and water leaks. However – “No one replaces the seals on a rod-pump oilwell when they’re in good shape,” Matthews explains. “They replace the seals, or they adjust the seals, when they’re leaking.”

A well can leak as many as 10 to 15 times before the seals are replaced. Sometimes, if the leak is especially bad, a crew will be brought in to steam-clean the equipment. That dilutes the oil and saltwater, driving the fluids far into the ground.

“Some of these wells in the province are in excess of 50 years old. We’re talking potentially thousands of leaks each year.

“The cumulative damage is really substantial.”

Matthews used to be frustrated about the spills and the lack of due care. But rather than complain, he set out to do something about it.

He worked on a basic design, then took it to NineDots, an industrial design firm in Edmonton, for completion. The wellhead skirt would be a tough, light polyethylene device. It was opaque, but an improved version now has a partially clear cover so well operators can see their equipment on their busy routes.

Adoil’s Super Steam Metal Jacket, in contrast, is made mostly of aluminum and stainless steel to withstand the high temperatures of bitumen extraction.

Matthews wanted his products to be simple and easy to use for all personnel including contractors. And they had to be completely effective at capturing produced fluids without catching rain or snow.

He included an explosion-proof switch that would automatically shut down the pumpjack when a spill threatened to overflow the 10-gallon tank that’s connected to the skirt or jacket by a draining tube.

Adoil has come along at just the right time. Oilpatch executives and environmentalists alike know that contaminants can no longer be tossed around or buried under gravel.

Adoil clients are now seeing the necessity of these products as oilwell and lease-cleanup costs skyrocket.

As an avid outdoorsman, Matthews points out, “The land belongs to all of us and as oil industry workers we must all be partners in its conservation – from the presidents down to the guys in the field.”

For more information on Adoil’s made-in-Alberta products, phone Marty Matthews at 403.242.2201; fax 403.217.8868; e-mail adoil@telus.net or go to www.adoil.net.