Floormen Victor Carcia and Richard Tucker pull pipe from a well to change a drill bit recently in Converse County. (Dan Cepeda, Oil City News)

CASPER, Wyo. — Operating an oil drilling rig takes an enormous amount of planning, not only from an engineering standpoint, but a practical one as well.

“They come here knowing to bring their groceries for two weeks,” said Seth Zupanick regarding the rig’s 20 shift workers.

Zupanick is the field superintendent at True Drilling Company’s Rig 38, which is currently working a job in Converse County on a plot of land about 45 minutes from Glenrock by car. Zupanick, who has been with True Drilling since 1980, helped lead a tour of the site for Casper media members last week.

The rig is one of 13 total owned and operated by True Drilling. As of March 24, there are three rigs in service, True’s director of drilling Bill DeGraeve said. The company focuses its activity in the Rocky Mountain region, including Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and South Dakota.

“This rig disassembles, and we transport it a piece at a time,” explains DeGraeve. “For a rig of this nature and all of the ancillary equipment, there’s roughly 60 truckloads of equipment that have to be broken down, loaded up, moved to the next location, and then rigged back up.”

The process of assembling a rig once it’s on site takes roughly five or so days, he said. In this case, the rig will drill a single well, which takes about 20 days, before it’s torn down and moved just a few miles down the road to drill more wells. This rig drills down and horizontally nearly five miles through shale, he said.

The rigs are designed to “walk” when needed. DeGraeve says there will be two wells close together drilled on the next site. Instead of tearing down and reassembling the rig, it will “walk” using “stompers” about 24 inches at a time.

“It takes us about 30 minutes to walk 15 feet,” he said, “and we’re talking about a million pounds of weight.”

To power the drilling operation, a portable diesel-powered generation plant produces 1,100 kW of electricity to run the 1,500-horsepower drawworks system that’s connected by a steel cable to the drilling mechanisms. The roar inside the generating room producing all that power is unbearable, even with hearing protection.

Once a well site is drilled, it’s encased and the drill rig moves on to a different job. It’s takes several years for a well to recover costs and start making a profit, all depending on the markets. DeGraeve says some wells in Wyoming have been active for more than six decades. During the 2020 pandemic crash, numerous wells in Wyoming were capped, but activity is steadily rising.

A few years ago, Wyoming’s rig count was around 35. As of March 24, some 15 are operating. “A year ago, we were around half of that,” said DeGraeve, “so we’ve already doubled in less than a year.”

“But again, we’re still only half of where we were three years ago, so there’s a lot of room for growth,” he said.

“In order to get industry activity back to where it was three years ago, what’s going to drive that is stability in the market, and operators having confidence that these oil prices that are here today will be here long enough to drill a well, produce it for the five or six years that it takes to recover its reserves, and get an economic return.”

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