Pigs may never have wings, but an Alberta company is eager to show that drilling rigs definitely can fly.

Drillers Technology Corp. of Calgary should soon get its chance, as oil and gas exploration intensifies in northern Canada and a new study extols the benefits of
“heli-portable” drilling rigs.

Drillers Technology has six drilling rigs that can be disassembled into various components and carried by a large workhorse helicopter into roadless and environmentally sensitive sites.

“I think we’re the only ones that have heli-portable rigs right now in Canada,” says Ron Gnyra, president of Drillers Technology.

Drillers Technology Corp. photo
Heli-portable rigs can be disassembled and flown into inaccessible or environmentally sensitive sites where drilling would otherwise be cost-prohibitive.

“Instead of going in and tearing up the countryside and building roads, you just fly the rig in and drill the well.”

Heli-portable drilling “is going to be a viable application,” says John King, president and chief executive of Airborne Energy Solutions, whose dispatch office is in Whitecourt.

“What you’ll see is up-front proving of fields and exploratory (oil and gas well) applications,” especially in the North where winter drilling operations are time-limited and expensive, King says.

Airborne Energy, while not into heli-portable drilling, runs entire oilfields, services wells, conducts seismic operations and inspects pipelines across Western Canada – all by helicopter.

Each of Airborne’s 65 helicopters, with custom servicing equipment designed to enhance well production, typically rent for $3,500 an hour.

“We’re busy and we’re seeing a pretty active fall,” King says.

Gnyra says that when it comes to heli-portable drilling, Drillers Technology was “this close” last year to doing its first job. A natural gas producer had applied to drill an exploratory well in the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area, a Kananaskis-like wilderness in northeast B.C.

But the Muskwa-Kechika advisory board and the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission decided to put the application on hold, and ordered a study of heli-portable technology’s potential benefits and risks.

The study, by Tera Environmental Consultants of Calgary, shows heli-portable drilling indeed has benefits and that safety and environmental risks can be managed, says Randal Glaholt, partner and senior planner at the consulting firm.

Regulatory officials had expressed concerns about worker safety, disposal of waste drilling fluids and the consequences of an accident, such as well blowout, with a helicopter-only operation.

But Glaholt’s study points out that these risks are managed in heli-portable drilling done elsewhere in the world, such as in remote jungle sites in Brazil, Venezuela and Indonesia.

Safety and environmental risks are also managed for helicopter-supported offshore oil platforms and in helicopter-only jobs at remote sites in other industries, including mining, logging and fishing camps.

Building a new road into a wilderness also can be costly in both financial and environmental terms, especially if the construction runs into problems such as bad weather or an early spring runoff.

King notes that some gas producers are paying 12 months of the year for state-of-the-art drilling rigs that stay in the Mackenzie Delta, yet are able to operate only about three months of every year.

That’s the window for building winter ice roads to move rigs, support equipment, camps and workers in and out of the tundra.

Heli-portable drilling could open up those kinds of operations to year-round drilling.

Drillers Technology’s rigs, once disassembled, fit into cargo containers like those carried aboard ships. Each helicopter load typically weighs about 11,000 kilograms (24,000 pounds).

For the job the company nearly did last year, it would have taken a big helicopter such as a Chinook 234 about 36 trips to move the entire rig.

It would have cost about $1 million to fly the rig, the workers and related supplies in and out about 20 kilometres each way to the proposed wellsite.

At the same time, it can cost $4 million to build a road of similar length. And that doesn’t include the costs of reclaiming the road and wellsite if the well contains no commercial amounts of oil or gas.

Glaholt says in most cases in Canada, a heli-portable operation will cost more than building a road. His report recommends that governments consider providing incentives such as royalty breaks, extended well lease tenure or additional acreage to companies that choose heli-portable drilling. “I think there are a lot of ways it could be done.”

Not soon enough for Drillers Technology. Since the company began operations five years ago, its six heli-portable rigs have been kept busy drilling wells supported by roads.

But Gnyra is itching to see his rigs earn their first set of wings.

Meanwhile, the B.C. Liberal government has decided to open up 138,000 hectares of the currently closed Muskwa-Kechika Management Area in northeast B.C. next spring to oil and gas development.

The region, encompassing about 6.3 million hectares, is thought to contain up to $2 billion worth of natural gas deposits.

The previous NDP government had set aside the area, with special rules restricting how it can be used.