Old fire engine used to make drilling rig for oil explorer

A Taranaki-based oil and gas exploration company has built New Zealand's first locally-made drilling rig for at least 100 years - using parts from a $20,000 used fire engine imported from Japan.

Greymouth Petroleum officially unveiled the rig at one of the wellsites in its Ngatoro oil field near Inglewood yesterday.

Although properly known as Greymouth Rig 1, it has already been nicknamed the Orange Toughy, a reference to a well-known rig that drilled many wells in Taranaki a few years ago that was called the Orange Roughy.

Yesterday, Greymouth chairman Mark Dunphy told guests that the new rig had its beginnings when chief operating officer John Sturgess had spotted a used, imported fire truck while trying to buy a truck for the company's oilfield operations.

"He rang me as he was heading back down Auckland's southern motorway, and said he reckoned we could make a drilling rig from the fire engine.

"So today, we're here to celebrate John's unique ability to perceive that you can do these sorts of things."

With the help of a number of Taranaki firms, Greymouth stripped the fire engine of its equipment and converted it into the truck they sought in the first place.

Then they transformed the long extension fire ladder into the new rig's collapsible and extendable drilling derrick.

Various other rig components had to be either built or imported, meaning that in all the rig has cost about $1.5 million to build.

But already it has proved a major success.

Trial operations have included the drilling of an exploration well east of Stratford, the completion of a well in the Ngatoro field for production testing, and the workover of an existing production well in the field.

Now the Orange Toughy will begin a series of workovers of other production wells throughout onshore Taranaki.

Mr Dunphy said a major frustration within the oil and gas industry in New Zealand was that it was often difficult and expensive to get access to drilling equipment.

"So it is now great news to own our own drilling kit. And when we're not using it, we'll share it with all the other players in the exploration and production industry."

-nzpa