Corporate joint-venture aims to drill Canada’s longest wells

NISKU, Alberta – Neighbors Drilling and Far Fetched Energy have announced a project to dominate the world of onshore drilling performance.  A new Octo-Rig, aka The Nadya, will stand almost 100 meters high and be able to rack 8 lengths of drill pipe per stand. The rig is being developed for special purpose extended reach drilling in Canada, and is being prepared for a 2016 drilling program.

The mega-rig will feature the latest in new LED screen technology, and all 14 pumps will be digitally controlled from the doghouse. It is equipped with a staggeringly intricate dual top-drive system to help pull the expected 28,000 meters of pipe out of the ground after each well.  In addition, the 8 bi-mode duality “Rump Shakers” will be sure to keep the geologist and the Mud Man happy.

This is our biggest venture yet. We want to set the Gold Standard for drilling here in Canada, and we think we have the guts and the brains to get it done. Our team of fabricators and engineers have this design dialed in and it is going to turn this industry on its head.  I promise. – DK Rutinnguh, COO Neighbors Canada

The Nadya will be moved by special permit when needed, and requires roughly 300 loads to move. Each move will take roughly 3 weeks from location to location, so some rural residents may be inconvenienced, but that is par for the course according to DK.

Wells with a depth of 25,000 to 28,000 meters are expected to take almost 5 months each to drill, so a  3 week move is still economic.  While the rig’s cost to build is more than most service companies profit in a year, Neighbors stands behind the decision, as does the primary contractor for the work, Far Fetched Energy.

Our 2016-17 pilot project will require 4 of these wells to be drilled, completed, and tied in to our primary facilities network.  Each well will be roughly 24,000 meters total depth, and of that roughly 22,000 meters will be open hole lateral. The laterals can be drilled in any of the 5 zones we have licensed, as with this length of well, we can vary the total vertical depth almost 20 meters and hit all of our reservoir targets at in one well, multiple times. – Fergus Hammerknob, Operations Manager with Far Fetched Energy

The drills will be steered by a combination of Engisteering and high performance directional and MWD technology. Beyond Control Directional Services will be offering its new RMS (rotary-maybe-steerable) tool to enable the reach necessary, and a new mobile EM MWD tool will be used to track the wellpath and RMS tool data in real time. One caveat to the MWD tools will be the contraint on the well-path, which has to follow existing primary or secondary roads.

We need to track the well path in real time, and be directly above it with our mobile EM reciving truck.  At distances that far away, we’d never get signal back to The Nadya.  The wells are being planned to follow highways and secondary roads so that we can track the gamma and survey signal vertically. We need to get special permits to drive down the roads at 5 meters per minute, but the Saskatchewan Government has approved them in advance, so it should not be a problem. – Brody Riknicker, Beyond Control Senior MWD Talent

With a project of this scale and time frame, investment groups and brokers alike have been on the fence about the profitability of the project and how shareholders will react.  Time will tell if Far Fetched Energy and Neighbors make this a reality. And if they can, it will surely change the way all wells are drilled in Canada from now on.