A “weird and wonderful” drilling innovation in Alberta is helping producers tap more oil and gas at lower cost and with less environmental impact.

With names like fishbone, fan, comb-over and stingray, “multilateral” wells turn a single wellbore from the surface into multiple horizontal legs underground.

“They do look spectacular, and they are making quite a bit of money for small companies, so there’s a lot of interest from investors,” said Calin Dragoie, vice-president of geoscience with Calgary-based Chinook Consulting Services. 

Dragoie, who has extensively studied the use of multilateral wells, said the technology takes horizontal drilling — which itself revolutionized oil and gas production — to the next level.

“It’s something that was not invented in Canada, but was perfected here. And it’s something that I think in the next few years will be exported as a technology to other parts of the world,” he said. 

Dragoie’s research found that in 2015 less than 10 per cent of metres drilled in Western Canada came from multilateral wells. By last year, that share had climbed to nearly 60 per cent.  

Royalty incentives in Alberta have accelerated the trend, and Saskatchewan has introduced similar policy.

Multilaterals first emerged alongside horizontal drilling in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dragoie said. But today’s multilaterals are longer, more complex and more productive.

The main play is in Alberta’s Marten Hills region, where producers are using multilaterals to produce shallow heavy oil. 

Today’s average multilateral has about 7.5 horizontal legs from a single surface location, up from four or six just a few years ago, Dragoie said. 

One record-setting well in Alberta drilled by Tamarack Valley Energy in 2023 features 11 legs stretching two miles each, for a total subsurface reach of 33 kilometres — the longest well in Canada.

By accessing large volumes of oil and gas from a single surface pad, multilaterals reduce land impact by a factor of five to ten compared to conventional wells, he said.

The designs save money by skipping casing strings and cement in each leg, and production is amplified as a result of increased reservoir contact.

Here are examples of multilateral well design. Images courtesy Chinook Consulting Services.

Parallel

Fishbone

Fan

Waffle

Stingray

Frankenwells

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Indigenous ownership in Canadian oil and gas continues to grow with the launch of a new drilling company.  

Along with industry heavyweights, the Indian Resource Council of Canada (IRC) is one of the founding partners of newly-formed Indigena Drilling. IRC’s aim is to provide economic benefits to its more than 155 member nations across the country.  

“[This] is a great opportunity for our members to be on the ground floor of a First Nations-supported energy services company,” said Stephen Buffalo, Indian Resource Council CEO.  

Gurpreet Lail, CEO of Enserva, a national trade association representing the service, supply, and manufacturing sectors of the Canadian energy industry, welcomes the new company.  

“There are so many discussions happening around Indigenous economic reconciliation, but this actually is doing that instead of just talking about it,” she said. 

“This kind of partnership is actually going to help all Nations, not just one.” 

Indigena Drilling is an evolution of the relationship between Indigenous communities and drilling operators, says Mark Scholz, CEO of the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors (CAOEC). 

“We see a lot of joint partnerships within the industry where it could be ownership or shared ownership of a rig, but I think this is a unique one coming from the lens of a company starting out with significant ownership from an Indigenous perspective would be quite new, at least in the last 10, 20 years,” he said. 

Historically it has been more common for Indigenous partnerships on the service rig side of the industry, Scholz said. The main difference is that smaller service rigs conduct work on existing wells, versus drilling rigs that drill new wells.  

“A service rig can actually stay very tethered to a particular area and doesn’t have to move long distances, so it’s actually quite conducive to a lot of First Nations communities that often want to stay in the community,” Scholz said.  

The CAOEC forecasts approximately 6,400 wells will be drilled across western Canada this year, an increase of about 800 wells compared to 2022.  

Scholz said he expects more Indigenous ownership examples like Indigena in the future, particularly in British Columbia, because of the tremendous drilling opportunities that are going to exist in supporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. 

“Obviously long-term, both Alberta and British Columbia have huge gas reserves. As we start talking about the energy transformation, gas is going to be incredibly important,” he said.  

“I think we’re going to see more LNG takeaway capacity that’s going to have First Nations support and I do see additional opportunities for First Nations communities to have a very robust energy services sector within their communities that they’re going to be operating in.” 

Lail said there are more Indigenous-owned energy services companies today than previously, but more need to come into the space.  

“As an industry on the whole, I think we’ve done a really good job at moving the needle but there’s more movement that needs to happen,” she said.  

“I think this is a good news story and I hope we get more of these into the future.” 

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Fresh water use intensity across the oil and gas sector has decreased by 14 per cent since 2017, says a new report by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER).

Of the water used for energy development in Alberta, 82 per cent is recycled.

Driving the numbers is oil sands mining, which uses over 82 per cent of the industry’s fresh water. In 2021, mining companies used less fresh water, and produced more fresh water, than in the previous five years.

Oil sands mining in northeastern Alberta uses heavy equipment to remove oil sands from near-surface deposits and transports the material to facilities that separate bitumen from sand – which requires water.

The lower Athabasca River is the primary source of non-recycled water for oil sands mining, says the AER. Despite the industry’s dependence on the waterway, companies withdraw much less than the weekly limits set by Alberta Environment and Parks.

“They’ve got many new treatment methods that use less river water and more recycled water,” says John Brogly, director of water and tailings with Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance. “Each operator uses a slightly different process.”

In situ oil sands projects – which use drilled oil wells instead of mining – use water in the form of steam and require a decreasing amount of water per barrel of oil after the first few years of their life cycle, says the AER. As the wells mature, they require less water per barrel of oil as the amount of water produced at surface (most of which is recycled) is about the same as the amount of steam injected.

The projects use either steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) or cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) technology to recover oil by injecting steam into geological formations to heat bitumen and reduce its viscosity so it can flow to surface.

The five-year average fresh water use intensity for in situ projects was 0.19 barrels of non-saline water per barrel of oil, which is a 25 per cent decrease from 2017, says the AER. The reduction is due to high rates of produced water recycling and alternative water source use.

“The in situ sector uses almost exclusively water from subsurface aquifers,” says Brogly.

Only 13 per cent of fresh water allocated to all industries in Alberta was designated for oil and gas extraction, and the industry used only 19 per cent of its allocation, says the AER.

“It’s our job to ensure that Alberta’s energy industry uses water resources responsibly and identify where there is room for improvement,” says the AER.

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It’s -20C and the snow is blowing as Nicole Renella loads her vehicle and begins the long drive to an Alberta natural gas drilling site.

The highways, which snake through forests, small towns and prairies, are icy in places. The 36-year-old has already passed one car in the ditch and several ravens feeding on roadkill.

A semi-trailer passes in the opposite lane, momentarily reducing Renella’s visibility. Hours later she turns off the pavement, traverses a backroad, and arrives on site. The drilling rigs are lit up and roaring.  Steam rises into the night. Mobile industrial trailers are lined up. She offloads into her well-equipped living quarters and goes to bed.

The next morning, she meets with the operations team and works a shift surrounded by computer monitors, her microscope and lab supplies – guiding multimillion-dollar wellbores through gas-bearing rock two kilometres deep.

As the sun sets, Renella leaves the drilling control centre and looks to a distant mountain range.

“Trying to explain what I do to my family is always entertaining,” she says. “I just say I look at rocks all day long. They’re accustomed to watching television shows about drilling – but this isn’t Hollywood.”

Horizontal drilling on Nicole Renella’s location near Grande Prairie, Alberta. Photo by MWD technician Harley Alton

Renella grew up in suburbia between Palm Springs and Disneyland. She attended California State University at San Bernadino with the hope of studying pre-med. She took a geology course on a whim – knowing little about natural resources – but wanting to understand earthquake-causing faults.

“It all snowballed from there into joining the geology program,” says Renella, who works for Calgary-based Cabra Consulting. “I was able to stay with the same group of people for four years, and it was small. We graduated with just seven of us.”

According to research compiled by the Canadian Energy Centre, nearly 31 per cent of the jobs in Canada’s energy sector are held by women, while annual wages and salaries for women have increased over 30 per cent since 2009.

Seeking new frontiers, Renella moved to Canada in 2011 and began her career – she was 24, entering a male-dominated workplace. Her key to surviving well-meaning teasing “was not taking anything personally.” She maintained a sense of humour and quick wit.

“Once you show the drilling team the kind of person you are, and the reason you’re out there, it is usually understood quickly,” she says. “I’ve found throughout my years of working in this industry these are really good people. Everyone always wants to collaborate and work as a team.”

Despite the positive aspects of wellsite geology, the separation from friends and family can be difficult – particularly in winter, says Renella.

“The benefit if you work with a really good team, and you trust each other, is it makes the burden a little less,” she says. “Out here, it’s like having a bunch of brothers.”

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The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin contains some of the largest oil and gas reserves on earth, extracted using world-leading knowledge and technology.  

At 1.4 million square kilometres, larger than the entire country of Peru, the vast WCSB accumulation of sedimentary rock stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Canadian Shield to the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories.

The wedge-shaped geological structure is roughly six kilometres thick under the Rocky Mountains and thins to zero at its eastern margin in Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan.  

Over the decades, geologists like Nicole Renella of Cabra Consulting, along with countless geophysicists, engineers and technologists, have developed sophisticated methods for discovering and producing oil and gas from porous rock.  

“There’s a lot of good that comes out of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin,” said the drilling expert. “We bring materials out of the ground in gas or liquid form that get turned into tires, asphalt, oil products for vehicles, shoes, polyester, clothing – many of the things we use in our daily lives.” 

The energy sector “isn’t even close” to depleting the basin, said Renella, adding it’s important for people to know the high-level science behind oil and gas, as well as the safe production processes that are continuously being upgraded.  

“We can teach other countries that aren’t up to Canadian standards,” she said. “Ultimately, we want a safe and clean environment. At this point, I don’t see a viable energy source that can replace this industry.” 

The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin contains some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world

Two geological formations in the WCSB are driving oil and gas development in Canada today: the McMurray and the Montney. Renella has worked extensively in both. 

The McMurray is known for hosting oil sands mines at shallow depths north of the community of Fort McMurray and thousands of drilled oil wells where the formation is deeper and inaccessible to mining. 

The oil sands is estimated to contain 165 billion barrels of recoverable oil using current technology. Total oil resources are approximately 1.8 trillion barrels. Great care is taken to preserve wildlife habitat and reclaim areas where production is complete, said Renella.  

The Montney is her current area of specialization. The siltstone is endowed with massive quantities of natural gas that are liberated through high-tech horizontal drilling and fracking. The rocks, stretching from west-central Alberta to northeast B.C., also contain oil and natural gas liquids.  

Estimated Montney reserves are in the hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of marketable natural gas and billions of barrels of marketable natural gas liquids and oil – enough energy to power Canada for approximately 140 years. 

“The longevity is phenomenal. A lot of countries can’t even come close to something like that,” said Renella.

“Companies have really put a lot of effort into producing from the Montney and have made a considerable investment. So, it’s an asset that you can’t put a price on.” 

Drilling 3,500-metre Montney wells took up to a month when Renella began her career. As technology evolves, 6,700-metre wells can now be drilled in 10 to 12 days.  

“We can continually tap into it as long as the technology keeps growing and we have the ability to be safer and more efficient,” she said. 

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A new wave of female talent is reaching the shore of Canada’s energy sector, continuing to erode outdated workplace stereotypes, crashing through barriers, and delivering innovation. 

One of the most challenging workplaces in the industry is offshore drilling. Long hours, isolation, and potentially dangerous conditions can take a toll. As a young scientist, Jodie Scott was up for the challenge. Instead of finding a comfortable office job after graduation, she spent two years off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador working as a wellsite geologist for Schlumberger. 

“Honestly, it was probably the most exciting and the coolest thing I’ll ever do in my whole life,” she said. “I think that it is also one of the hardest things I would do in my whole life. There’s the need to be on-the-ball all the time, especially when there’s critical well control involved.” 

Offshore rigs are a male-dominated community, said Scott, who is now executive director of World Petroleum Council Canada Future Leaders. In a crew of over 200, there may be 10 or 15 women working primarily in kitchen and laundry services. That’s changing as more women pursue technical and scientific jobs.  

“That’s one of the circumstances where representation does matter – companies trusting that you’re out there doing a good job,” she said. “Imagine yourself as a 22-year-old woman going offshore for the first time, your entire crew is male. How welcome are you going to feel? I felt welcomed” 

Ashley Fernandes, vice-president of drilling optimization and drilling technology at Precision Drilling, is on a mission to boost female participation in his department from 12 per cent to 20 per cent by the end of 2023. There’s a growing number of women – industry wide – succeeding as field supervisors, he said. 

“The successes they’re bringing, the motivation for change, is great,” he said. Fernandes said he once worked in a technical office with 28 women. 

“It was one of the best engineering teams in the world,” he said. “I encourage women to join engineering and operations teams.” 

The Canadian energy sector is pivoting away from a male-dominated workplace, said Victoria Clark, a chemical engineer who works as a carbon sequestration advisor with Enbridge. Companies are working hard to ensure women feel included, she said. More women are in management positions – acting as role models for a new generation of female professionals. 

“There are many young women in Calgary trained in energy-related positions and backgrounds who would love to take some of these jobs,” she said.  

“There’s a lot of value to companies if they pursue a diverse workforce and the best way to ensure that is being inclusive and making it very clear publicly. Companies are looking for new and exciting ideas and those often come from new people who haven’t been in the space before.” 

The LNG Canada project is planning for 50 per cent gender balance in the coming years, said Candace Newman, the project’s vice-president of human resources and real estate. Now in the construction phase in the port of Kitimat, B.C., approximately four per cent to seven per cent of the company’s craft and trades workforce is female, she said, noting the number could double or triple. 

Women can be excellent welders, said Newman. They’re also excellent equipment operators. At the corporate level, female board members drive investment and revenue, she said.  

Particularly in the oil and gas industry, women bring a different approach to innovation and decision making, Newman said.  

Despite progress, there’s room for bringing more women into the energy sector, said Katie Smith-Parent, executive director of Young Women in Energy. 

“We are more than 50 per cent of the potential workforce, yet we only make up to 22 per cent,” she said. “So, it’s really about not only increasing women in the sector, but also retaining and advancing women.” 

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Canada’s oil and gas industry is working to reduce emissions while continuing to provide the reliable, affordable, and responsibly produced energy the world needs.  

From each of Canada’s top ten oil and gas producers’ latest environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, here’s one example of actions underway to reduce emissions.  

Companies are ranked by 2021 production measured in barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d), according to data in the Daily Oil Bulletin’s 2022 Top Operator’s Report.  

10. Peyto Exploration & Development
    2021 production: 91,051 boe/d

Peyto Exploration & Development is a natural gas producer in the Alberta Deep Basin play located along the northeastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. 

Like many companies, Peyto specifically targets reducing methane emissions from its operations.  

One way it does this is by powering electrical instrumentation and pumps on drilling and production sites using solar panels and battery storage. 

In 2021, Peyto reported it had cumulatively installed 3,325 solar panels to help eliminate the need to burn fuel gas.  

Read More: Peyto 2022 ESG Report 

9. MEG Energy
   2021 production: 93,733 boe/d

Many oil sands producers use SAGD technology, where steam is injected deep underground to heat and mobilize bitumen so it can be pumped to the surface.  

One way MEG Energy is working to reduce emissions is by incorporating a technology it calls eMSAGP. 

This enables the production of more oil using less steam. Producing steam requires burning natural gas, so using less steam means reduced emissions from gas combustion.  

eMSAGP involves drilling production wells between SAGD well pairs and injecting a non-condensable gas, like natural gas, into the reservoir. This maintains pressure while retaining heat from steam that was previously injected, allowing mobilized bitumen to flow without having to add more steam.   

eMSAGP is estimated to result in 14 per cent lower emissions than conventional SAGD.  

MEG Energy is a member of the Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. 

Read More: MEG Energy 2022 ESG Report 

8. Whitecap Resources
   2021 production: 112,222 boe/d

Whitecap Resources produces oil and gas from northeast B.C., central Alberta and southeast Saskatchewan.  

Because of its ownership of the Weyburn and Joffre carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, the company removes more CO2 than it emits. 

Weyburn, in Saskatchewan, is the world’s largest CCS project using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.  

For more than two decades, CO2 captured at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant in North Dakota has been carried by pipeline to Weyburn for ultimate storage deep underground.  

Since 2000, Weyburn and Joffre together removed more than 37 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, or the equivalent of taking more than 7.9 million cars off the road.  

Read More: Whitecap 2021 ESG Report 

7. Crescent Point Energy
   2021 production: 112,632 boe/d

Crescent Point Energy produces oil from the Shaunavon play in southwest Saskatchewan, the Bakken play in southeast Saskatchewan, and the Duvernay play in central Alberta. 

The company has identified so-called associated gas, or natural gas produced in small volumes during oil production, as one opportunity to reduce emissions.  

A solution is combustors, enclosed devices where no smoke, odor or visible flame is emitted, installed to manage associated gas during oil production. 

This is unlike flaring, which burns the associated gas into the atmosphere. 

In 2021, Crescent Point installed combustors on all new wells, and on a portion of existing sites, in the Dodsland region of Saskatchewan.  

Read More: Crescent Point 2022 ESG Report 

6. ARC Resources
   2021 production: 302,003 boe/d

ARC Resources produces natural gas, natural gas liquids, and crude oil from the Montney play that straddles the northern border between B.C. and Alberta.  

The company is electrifying its facilities in B.C., connecting to the provincial power grid and renewable hydroelectricity. 

Electrification resulted in a 36 per cent reduction in GHG intensity from 2016 to 2020, despite the company growing oil and gas production by 37 per cent.   

Read More: ARC Resources 2022 ESG Report 

5. Imperial
   2021 production: 383,167 boe/d

Imperial has oil and gas production, processing and refining operations across Canada. In the oil sands, the company operates both in situ (drilling) and mining projects.   

To help address emissions at its Kearl oil sands mine, Imperial is incorporating new mobile equipment that uses advanced exhaust gas after-treatment technologies to improve air quality and reduce emissions.  

About 36 per cent of Imperial’s Kearl mobile mine fleet meets these standards, the company says. 

Imperial is a member of the Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. 

Read More: Imperial 2022 ESG Report 

4. Tourmaline
   2021 production: 441,145 boe/d

Tourmaline primarily produces natural gas from the Alberta Deep Basin and the Montney play in northeast B.C. 

Over the last five years the company says it has been systematically displacing the use of diesel to power its operations in the field with natural gas it produces itself.  

Natural gas is used to operate hybrid-fuel drilling rigs and portable generators that generate on-site electricity.  

Displacing high-carbon diesel with cleaner natural gas allows the company to reduce both emissions and costs, Tourmaline says. 

Read More: Tourmaline 2020 Sustainability Report 

3. Suncor Energy
   2021 production: 698,600 boe/d

With operations across Canada, Suncor Energy is helping reduce emissions from Alberta’s power grid through cogeneration, or the production of steam and electricity from natural gas.  

Suncor exports to the Alberta grid about 40 per cent of the 1,400 megawatts of electricity it generates, which is helping reduce reliance on coal-fired power. 

The company is now replacing two coke-fired boilers at its oil sands base plant with new natural gas-fired cogeneration units, to be complete in 2024.  

The project is expected to enable a further 800 MW of electricity exports to the Alberta grid, or about seven per cent of current demand, reducing emissions by five million tonnes per year compared to coal-fired power.  

Suncor Energy is a member of the Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. 

Read More: Suncor Energy’s 2022 Sustainability Report 

2. Cenovus Energy
   2021 production: 731,300 boe/d

Reducing methane emissions is a central focus for Cenovus Energy, particularly in its conventional oil and gas operations.  

The company says in 2021 it reduced methane emissions by 25 per cent from 2020 levels, or by about 520,000 tonnes of CO2e – about the impact of taking 113,000 cars off the road.  

One of the ways Cenovus is reducing methane emissions is by converting older equipment to low- or no-emissions systems.  

In 2021, the company converted more than 3,000 instruments, such as transducers and pressure controllers, to devices that consume and emit less natural gas. This alone cut methane emissions by close to 200,000 tonnes.  

Cenovus is also converting facility equipment like controllers and pumps to run on instrument air (compressed air) instead of natural gas to help continue reducing methane emissions. 

Cenovus Energy is a member of the Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. 

Read More: Cenovus Energy 2021 ESG Report 

1. Canadian Natural Resources
   2021 production: 1,080,522 boe/d

Canada’s largest oil and gas producer is also the sixth largest owner of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects globally.  

Canadian Natural Resources is majority owner of the Quest CCS project at the Scotford Refinery, as well as 50 per cent owner of the Sturgeon Refinery, where CO2 is captured and fed into the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, the world’s largest CO2 transportation system.  

The company also captures CO2 from hydrogen production at its Horizon project and sequesters the CO2 in oil sands tailings.  

In total, Canadian Natural has capacity to capture 2.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, or the equivalent of taking about 576,000 cars off the road.  

Canadian Natural is a member of the Pathways Alliance of oil sands producers committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. 

Read More: Canadian Natural’s 2022 Stewardship Report

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Canada’s energy sector is raising the standard of living for many Indigenous people, says an Indigenous oil and gas contractor who employs dozens of people in Alberta and B.C. under the banner of environmental sustainability. 

Boomer Desjarlais, 46, a member of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation in northern Alberta, began building Top Notch Oilfield Contracting in 2004 with his wife Judy, who is chief of the Blueberry River First Nation northwest of Fort St. John.  

They started off with one employee, $1,500 and a big dream.  

Depending on industry activity, the award-winning heavy earthworks company now employs between 60 and 250 people – roughly 20 per cent are Indigenous. The company strives to bridge the gap between First Nations and industry, a step forward in reconciliation, he says.  

When it comes to understanding the truth about Indigenous communities and Canada’s energy sector, Desjarlais says “I tell people to turn off the TV first thing and do some research.” He says there are “outsiders” actively working against Canada’s energy sector. 

“The media won’t communicate the rest of the story where Indigenous people are going on holidays and buying campers. They are putting their kids in college and sports programs,” says the father of three. 

Desjarlais’ success is helping raise up others in his community. Back in 2018 he cut a deal with natural gas producer Petronas Canada to buy an $842,000 road grader. The company promised to keep the machine busy if Desjarlais employed an Indigenous operator. Several people applied for the position. 

“One guy stood out above the rest,” he says. “He’s been working for us on the grader since 2018. He’s a preferred guy. Petronas worked with us by having a consultant who was willing to train him up and follow him around until he was golden. Today the kid is thriving. He’s got a young family … doing great.”   

Desjarlais, a board member of the Indigenous Resource Network, grew up in and around the energy sector. He lived in Swan Hills, Alta. for eight years where his father worked as a supervisor on service rigs. The family moved to Slave Lake, then to Red Earth Creek where his father operated an oilfield trucking company.  

Desjarlais says the experience prevented him from living through social problems on reserve. 

“I grew up in oil towns. Never did grow up on the reservation until later in life,” he says. “We homesteaded a place on the reserve out in Sturgeon Lake Alberta. But my father kept his business running up there, and my mother and I moved to Sturgeon Lake where my mom became the chief. She was the second woman chief in Canada.” 

Desjarlais said both his parents worked hard to provide for him and his sister. By the time he was 13, he’d traveled to numerous U.S. states, including several trips to Disneyland. When the family moved to the reserve, they started a 275-head cattle ranch away from the townsite. They raised around 50 horses and eventually around 120 head of bison.  

Thanks to his mother, starting at age 13 Desjarlais began working as a pipefitter’s helper. He went to high school for one year. 

“I actually dropped out at grade 10 and just went to work full-time,” he says. 

Taking after his father, Desjarlais’ trajectory as an energy sector worker and business owner has allowed him to provide improved quality of life for his family. One of his daughters is a legal assistant. The other is a nurse and mother. His 16-year-old son is interested in owning his own company. 

Desjarlais is determined to tell the story of Indigenous people lifting themselves out of poverty through sustainable resource development. 

“There are a bunch of different companies out there that want to help get the word out,” he said. 

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When Nicole Romanow looks at drilling rigs from 30 years ago, she is impressed by the change and innovation that has occurred in Canada’s oil and gas industry – and what is yet to come.  

That’s because as team lead for sustainability strategy at Canadian drilling company Ensign Energy Services, she understands the level of equipment that is in the field today and what is on the way tomorrow.  

It’s no more rig workers manually hauling chains around. It’s high-tech, highly automated machinery geared for optimum performance. And technology is increasingly targeted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

“To see the high-spec rigs we have today and the rig automation, the step-change in drilling performance, emissions management and land stewardship is remarkable,” Romanow says.  

While Canada’s oil sands sector often makes news for innovations that reduce environmental impacts like emissions per barrel and water use, similar efforts by the so-called “conventional” industry – basically everything that is not the oil sands – can get overlooked, says Mark Scholz, CEO of the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors (CAOEC).  

“On the conventional oil and gas side, there’s a lot happening that might not necessarily make it to the headlines,” he says.  

“And the conventional side of the business, that’s where the vast majority of the employment is coming from, stretching across western Canada.” 

Conventional oil and gas mainly centers on drilling, whereas the oil sands is more like building large-scale manufacturing facilities.  

Every active drilling rig in Canada generates about 220 direct and indirect jobs, according to oil and gas labour information provider PetroLMI. 

About 5,400 wells are expected to be drilled in western Canada in 2022, according to the Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC). This is up from 4,650 wells in 2021 but well below the record 11,475 wells drilled in 2013. 

Rigs are being outfitted with new technology to reduce emissions, in a highly competitive business that doesn’t allow for much flexibility on costs.  

“We think that long-term, lasting sustainability is about not only saving on emissions, but also improving performance. Those are the solutions that are economic and have staying power,” Romanow says.  

“From the service side, it’s always about how you can provide a unique edge that way.” 

Faster Drill Times 

Drilling has already come a long way in reducing emissions, Scholz says, primarily because of new technologies that allow rigs to run much more quickly and efficiently.  

“Wells that 15-20 years ago took us 40 days to drill now take us 5 days to drill, because we have rigs that have better horsepower and better pumping capabilities,” he says.  

“We have better downhole equipment and drill bit technology, and we have directional tools that allow us to basically change the direction of the bit so that we can do horizontal drilling and capture more of the resource play that we’re drilling through.” 

Fewer days on location means less time using the rig’s engines or consuming energy to run equipment. Scholz says this reduces emissions by about 85 per cent compared to older technology. 

Alternative Fuels and Batteries 

Replacing diesel fuel is the name of the game for lowering emissions on drilling rigs, and right now that’s being done through dual-fuel natural gas/diesel generators, natural gas generators, connecting directly to the electrical grid, and more recently battery energy storage systems.  

“Batteries are the hottest topic as of late,” says Ashley Connolly, who runs marketing and business development for Canadian contractor Precision Drilling’s suite of environmental technology solutions.  

“When coupled with diesel, natural gas, or dual-fuel generators, a battery energy storage system reduces the number of generators online and increases the average load on the engines, allowing them to run more efficiently.” 

Precision is part of an $8-million pilot project with Caterpillar and major natural gas producer Tourmaline Oil Corp. using a mobile natural gas generator and battery system. The project has $3.2 million in funding from Emissions Reduction Alberta.   

The system is projected to save 3,800 tonnes of emissions per rig per year. With the proposed commercialization plan, Tourmaline estimates a reduction of 11.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions by the end of 2050. 

Engine Automation 

Automation has been a major improvement for Canada’s oil and gas drillers, and new applications are helping reduce emissions, Connolly says.  

New engine automation technology continuously monitors rig power demand and compares that against the available engine power, for example the number of engines online.  

With new technology, engines are automatically started or stopped to have only the required number running, which optimizes efficiency, reducing fuel consumption and associated GHG emissions. 

Romanow says automation systems like this allow rig operators flexibility to switch energy source based on conditions. 

“They’re pulling from the most efficient source of energy from a performance perspective, as well as from an emissions perspective,” she says. 

The Future 

Beyond batteries and the benefits of using power from the electrical grid, Connolly expects that the future will involve more new technologies like carbon capture. But the application will require different systems than those used at an oil sands project or fertilizer plant. 

“Carbon capture projects have been focused primarily at the facility level or stationary areas, not mobile equipment,” she says. 

“We’re working on developing that. We are also exploring how fuel cell technology and hydrogen as a fuel source can be implemented into drilling operations.” 

Scholz says the drilling industry’s commitment to innovation and lower environmental impacts should help recruit the many new workers needed as global oil and gas demand continues for decades to come.  

“This is very much a high tech, highly innovative industrial process that we’re involved in that takes the environment very seriously,” he says.  

“It’s going to require the special skill sets from a new generation that’s going to help us really deploy these technologies and ultimately help us design and implement new ones.” 

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