WorldWide Drilling Resource

19 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® OCTOBER 2013 HDD Plays Key Role in Lower Churchill Project Compiled by Amy White, Associate Editor WorldWide Drilling Resource ® As WWDR continues covering phase one of the $7 bi l l ion Lower Churchill Project, Direct Horizontal Drilling of Alberta, Canada, has landed a large contract and will be moving one of its largest rigs, along with a convoy of 30 trucks, to begin drilling 8 bores on both sides of the Strait of Belle Isle, which sep- arates Labrador from Newfoundland. These eight, mile-long boreholes through solid granite will contain cable conduits carrying power from the new 824- megawatt Muskrat Falls hydro dam to Newfoundland. Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) was selected to minimize the environmental impact of the project. The province of Newfoundland is experiencing a growing economy, high- er than average new home construc- tion, growing electricity use in homes, and increased industrial demand, all requiring more power than previous years. Forecasts prepared by Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro show without a new source of power for the island by 2015, demand wi l l begin to exceed supply. The Lower Churchi l l Project is being developed to solve this issue, and Direct Horizontal Drilling expects their work on the project to be complet- ed in two years. Company President Lon Briscoe said the work is worth “mil- lions of dollars” to the firm. “We are doing the transition from land to ocean; we drill down, then punch out to the seabed far enough from shore to avoid the icebergs, which could tear the cable apart as they scour the coast. Nothing like this has ever been done ...through the solid granite and with that kind of distance,” Briscoe said. Briscoe expects the Belle Isle con- tract to be expanded to include a sec- ond seabed crossing, which will extend from the tip of southern Newfoundland across to Nova Scotia, where Emera Inc. has plans to strengthen its power grid with contributions from Labrador, and send excess to the U.S. market. Briscoe stated, “Our technology is right out of the oilpatch. [HDD] was born in the construction industry, but we have taken this and changed it. We won [this contract] because of our equipment and crews. We can work in Map courtesy of powerinourhands.ca severe weather...we work in [-65ºF/-55ºC] degrees in Alberta.” Briscoe is confident in Direct Horizontal’s ability to get the job done: “There is all this talk these days of the dangers of pipelines crossing rivers, but that is based on old technology where they used to dig trenches for the pipe. We can drill [109 yards] below the river bed, down one side and up the other. We are running 16 horizontal rigs and they are working steady.”