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Featured Articles
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Mar 2010
| Source: Oilweek Magazine
| | | Pushing through
| | | Despite suffering big losses recently, Trican is intent on reducing its environmental footprint.
| | | by Jim Bentein
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| Despite coping with what the company calls a "difficult business environment," Calgary-based oilfield service company Trican Well Service continues to develop new technologies aimed at improving the footprint of its processes, the energy consumed in those processes, and the safety of its workers.
Senior managers who have helped develop processes that reduce water and energy use and that involve the use of safer chemicals say management of the company continues to be supportive, despite having to resort to staff reductions, wage rollbacks, and other steps to cut costs in order to stem the flow of red ink.
The company reduced its staff count by about 20 per cent in the last year and implemented wage rollbacks. Those steps helped it save $20 million, but it still faced a loss of more than $23 million in the first nine months of 2009 (it earned $24.9 million in the same period in 2008 and $93.6 million in 2007), as rig utilization dropped by at least 50 per cent in most of its markets (largely Canada, the United States, and Russia).
But senior managers involved in developing new environmentally related technologies say they continued to receive support form senior management last year, despite the significant downturn in the oilfield service business.
"The support from upper management has been pretty impressive," said Marlin Balaux, technical manager at Trican´s southeast Calgary research and development (R&D) centre. "Trican has always been known as a technology company, and we continue to develop new technologies on an ongoing basis."
The 12,000 square foot R&D centre employs 30 people, up from just a handful when it was established in 2005. Since joining Trican in 2001, Balaux has seen the company increase its overall staffing to 3,000 from 300, and despite the recent cutbacks, the R&D centre will increase staffing this year.
Trican chief executive officer Dale Dusterhoft and other senior managers crafted an environmental policy statement that sounds more like the musings of a green group than and oilfield service company.
"The company supports the right of living things to survive in an atmosphere free of harmful pollutants to our air, water, and soil," it reads in part. "We are aware that we are only a part of a greater community and do not exist in isolation."
Balaux, who has a chemical technology background, said the company walks its talk-and that is reflected in the support his department receives, financially and otherwise.
He says the R&D centre tries to hire an "eclectic mix" of employees, including those with backgrounds in environmental sciences, earth sciences, and biochemistry.
That gives the R&D centre a broad perspective. For instance, it deals with suppliers in the cosmetics, agricultural, and pharmaceutical sectors, which has helped it adopt materials and practices that aren´t commonly used in the petroleum industry.
It was the R&D department´s out-of-the-box thinking that helped it come up with an innovation that gave Trican a leg up in its industry, when it developed the company´s Combination Frac Unit.
"The idea was to come up with something nimble and with a reduced footprint, which employed a smaller piece of equipment than would normally be the case," Balaux said.
A single Combination Frac Unit replaces three larger units, with each performing separate tasks (fluid pumping, chemical additives, and pumping). It not only reduces the environmental footprint but has a cost advantage. The R&D centre has come up with several other innovations as well, including:
• The AI-7NR Acid Inhibitor, which replaces the corrosion inhibitors normally used to coat metal surfaces that are exposed to oil and gas-producing formations. Trican´s proprietary inhibitor is non-toxic and non-hazardous to people and the environment.
• Eco Clean, which it developed in response to the Alberta government´s directive about three years ago aimed at protecting water wells and aquifers from potentially being impacted by the development of shallow gas and oil and coalbed methane gas. The lab developed a non-toxic fracturing fluid that contains low-residue polymer, which has solved the problem.
• Dustless Mixing System, which helps improve air quality during operations through the use of Trican´s Enclosed Mixing System. In the past, during the cement-mixing process in the field, dust and particulate particles were released into the air, contaminating the environment. But the enclosed mixing system allows the mixing to occur in a closed environment.
The R&D department has also helped Trican develop procedures that improve its environmental performance. For example, the company uses mineral oil and canola oil rather than diesel in all of its slurry polymer solutions. The use of non-flammable and non-carcinogenics is safer for its employees as well as for the environment. There is a cost advantage too (despite the higher cost of the mineral oils or canola) because plastic shipping totes can be recycled, which is not the case if diesel is used.
Balaux said his department has developed one of its most exciting products yet, which is to be introduced into the field in the next few months.
"We don´t have a formal name for it yet, but we´re calling it the Green Slick Water Fracturing System," he said.
It´s a non-toxic product that will help deal with concerns in the United States and elsewhere about hydraulic fracturing in shale gas plays potentially leading to contamination of underground watercourses.
"Within the next six to seven months, we´ll be using this system somewhere in the U.S.," he said.
Trican´s R&D department is not alone in being given the resources needed to solve serious environmental problems in the energy industry.
David Jones, corporate manager for industrial pipeline services, says the company gave him free reign to establish the department seven years ago to tackle water overuse and other environment issues in the pipeline sector.
"I had a mandate to search for technologies that would minimize waste and that would be safer for employees," he says. "We decided to go out and search for existing technologies rather than to develop our own."
Since then, it has acquired licences to technologies that are being applied in the oilsands industry and in refining and power generation.
In the past, high-pressure water systems were used to clean heat exchangers, used widely in the in situ sector of the oilsands and in upgrading.
Three years ago, Trican found an existing technology that uses low pressure and lower volumes of water.
"We use about one-quarter of the water employed in the past," he said. In addition, it recycles the water. By replacing diesel-powered, high-pressure water units, the technology substantially reduces the environmental footprint of the cleaning process.
More recently, Trican licensed a technology that is seeing widespread adoption in the oilsands sector, again aimed at heat exchangers.
The Mobile Bundle Cleaner is a system that complements its low-pressure cleaning system. It replaces high-pressure blasting that only removed some of the contaminants in the past. The unit is submerged in the bundle cleaner, bringing the unit back to close-to-new status, which can translate into substantial savings for the oilsands industry and other sectors.
Jones said he and his staff of 35 "have been blessed at Trican with the shared vision to grow our business based on technologies that improve environmental performance."
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