Oil field drilling operations in Alaska: new technology allows for creative drilling from Cook Inlet to the North Slope.

• Author: Bradner, Mike

When most people think of the oil and gas industry, a drill rig springs to mind. A modern drilling rig can be an immense structure, its mast typically rising 130 feet in the air. With all of its equipment, it can weigh as much as 2,000 tons, or more.

More than anything, drilling symbolizes the heavy, capital and technology-intensive nature of today's petroleum industry, at least the upstream side of the business that involves the finding and producing of oil and gas.

It also demonstrates the high skills of the industry's work force. Drill crews are well paid and highly trained. They have to be. Drilling an oil well involves huge amounts of investment, and it can be dangerous work.

Drilling is important to Alaska's economy, too, because working rigs require a lot of materials and supplies, ranging from fuel to steel drilling pipe, chemicals and water for the drilling fluids, or "mud," which is used in large quantities in drilling.

Most employees of drilling contractors live in Alaska. One company, Doyon Drilling, goes to great lengths to recruit and train shareholders of its owner, Doyon Ltd., the Interior Alaska regional Native corporation. Seventy-one of the Doyon Drilling's 190 Alaska employees are shareholders, said Ron Wilson, the company's general manager.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

When a rig is put to work, particularly in Alaska with its logistics challenges, a lot of support is required. There are a lot of people besides the rig crew on the team engaged in drilling a well, from its beginning to end. At the front-end of the effort is the geologist who plans the well, as well as a seismic contractor and its specialists who interpret seismic data for the geologists and the company planning the well.

A seismic survey involves sending low-frequency sound waves through the underground rock layers. Reflections of the sound waves off the rocks are recorded and analyzed. These help geologists map the geologic formations thousands of feet below ground.

Once the well site is approved, moving a drill rig to the location can be a complex, costly operation. In a producing field, specialized equipment is used to move the rig from one well location to another. Rigs on the North Slope are in modular units with large wheels, and tracks or skids that facilitate moves.

When a rig is moved to a remote location to drill an exploration well, the operation becomes much more complicated. The rig must be broken down into components that can be moved by truck or rolligons over ice and snow roads, or by large cargo aircraft. Rigs moved out to...