Drill rig move includes ice road delivery to Kuparuk

Long-time customer Nabors Drilling called on Lynden Transport earlier this year to move 72 loads for its rig “99” relocation project in the Kuparuk oil field. The move was a challenge with some loads weighing around 85,000 pounds and five that measured 14-feet wide.

“We started loading on Jan. 2 in Nikiski near Kenai and had 21 loads ready on the first day,” explains Justus Uphus, Lynden Transport Kenai Manager. “There was a delay on the receiving end when the drilling pad wasn’t ready, so Nabors decided to engineer and fit new wind-walls onto the lower part of the rig. We unloaded most of the loads that we had ready and had to start over two weeks later.”

Once the loads arrived at Prudhoe Bay, the second leg of the journey began. The ice pad destination was another three hours west of the Lynden office in Deadhorse, including an hour of driving over an ice road onto the Colville River Delta. The trucks, led by a pilot car, were in a convoy to the ice pad for the seven-hour roundtrip.

“Nabors Drilling was very impressed with how the move went from start to finish,” says Ryan Anderson, City Dispatcher at Prudhoe Bay. “The Kenai crew deserves a lot of credit. The most painstaking part of a rig move is the loading portion, and they did a great job. It made for a smooth delivery on our end. Our team at Prudhoe Bay also did a fantastic job getting the loads delivered in the specific order and time frame that the customer requested.”

Alaska West Express helped out by bringing up five heavy haul loads of generator units to power the rig, each weighing around 78,000 pounds. Justus singled out Kenai Operations Manager Justin Cooley and the Anchorage dispatch team for their expertise coordinating the movement of the rig out of Nikiski. “This project was another Lynden team effort resulting in a satisfied customer,” he says.