In Western Alberta there is a small little town that is often nicknamed Fox Vegas, this is a town filled with
roughnecks, freight trucks and slushy jagged streets! A city paved in Jack Frosts wintery reminder that
Canada is still deserved in owning a reputation as a toque wearing socks in bed loving Country.
Welcome to Fox Creek, the epee center of Canada’s largest shale boom. Companies like Shell, EnCana,
XTO, Murphy, Cenovus and many more are setting up shop, staking claim to liquid gold in the oil rich
Duvernay shale play!
There is money in them there hills son, here in the Fox Creek is the prize condensate, an ultra light oil
that’s perfect for diluting oil sands crude. At present, much of that type of diluent comes from the U.S.
but production is swelling in “Fox Vegas” area and the Duvernays shale plays, such as the Montenay. This
is great for Canada and will hopefully mitigate the dependency that Canada has on the same products
supplied by the cost heavy U.S. products.
The demand for this product is eclipsing expectations and is well over 600 000 bbls/d. In the Duvernay ,
oil and gas play output is projected to more than triple in the next couple of years and that means more
hotels, more restaurants, because of more demand on the areas by the growing work force that descends
on that region from all corners of the globe but this also means more work opportunities for service
companies like Harvest Oilfield Service.
Extraction of oil and production of oil is no easy task and burdens many resources from a plethora of
technological and equipment variances. Including production facilities, Drilling rigs, service rigs, and a
thousand more pieces of equipment, human resources and processes.
Essentially the oil starts at discovery then to development and in to production then transfers and
measurement (note measurements are always being taken for several reasons typically related to
environmental but also as it relates to marketing commitments etc.) transfer into holding tanks, pipelines,
then refining , if it is Gas it will go a different route that includes a midstream process or LNG regasification
and to a power plant or homes and industry. The above really is an explainer of Upstream, Midstream,
downstream. So as I am sure you gather there is a lot going on with many moving parts.
The Fox Vegas (Fox Creek) area is predominantly considered Upstream and it is in the completions of well
servicing or in fracking that a lot of fresh water is used and or crude is stored and those BOPs are regulated
by AER the Alberta Energy Regulator and in the directives BOPs are supposed to keep a certain
temperature to prevent valve malfunction and that is where Harvest Oilfield Service comes in.
Harvest Oilfield Service is a mobile boiler company that provides dry steam and Utility heat to the
Upstream and midstream oil and gas industry.
It is the job of the boiler operators at Harvest Oilfield Service to keep the BOP’s at the temperatures as
set forth by the AER. Boilers become a redundancy solution to BOPs and moreover ensure that the fresh
water we had spoken to in this writing do not become slushy frozen chunks that resemble the Fox Creek
roads.
Yes my friends we have come full circle and that is another thing Boilers can do to preserve water
consumption. In some forced circulation boilers, the water is circulated twenty times the rate of
evaporation. Heck this isn’t something Harvest Mobile Boilers are doing but it has a nice Segway into
water.
For Harvest Mobile Boilers to produce dry steam our Units/trucks require a lot of water and the trucks usually carry 3 cubes of water per truck and 200L of fuel. We use the fuel to run the equipment and water gets heated to the desired temp pending the Hp of the boiler or the MMBTU as an example a 100HP boiler will have a steam output of up to 3450 pounds of steam p/hr or 3.24 MMBTU however this requires a lot of fuel and water so maybe not the most efficient Mobile Boiler Truck if you happen to have a BOP or two to keep at Temperature but a fantastic application if you are frozen or you have multiple BOPs on the verge of failing compliance.
The Mobile Boilers are a busy utility in the winter months as the average temperatures in the Duvernay
from Nov to Feb are in the double digits negative CELCIUS in other words its damn cold in Fox Vegas. (Fox
Creek and we look forward to your business (Harvest Oilfield Service) The mobile Boiler company putting
service back into energy!