Oil explorer says goodbye to copper wire

By PAUL BRISLEN

The bad old days of running copper lines along electric fences are a distant memory for oil and gas exploration company Swift Energy.

These days the drilling operations report back via wireless broadband delivered by Xtra and BCL's Extend network.

Swift is drilling in several locations in Taranaki and the company's IT administrator, Patrick Caldwell, says it used to "roll its own" dial-up.

"We'd roll out copper lines, usually along the farmer's electric fences, which didn't help matters."

Caldwell said interference and earthing issues, coupled with the huge expense, were a headache for all concerned.

"Having a connection is important. We send data back each day for a daily report."

Swift tried Telecom's mobile network but without any joy.

"We did try CDMA but we just couldn't get the coverage," Caldwell said.

Today Swift uses BCL's fixed wireless network and has set up in two locations and is building a third.

But the Swift team like to kick the tyres. "The BCL technicians come in to do the installation but we've moved them a couple of times on our own and it seems to work again," Caldwell said.

Swift designed a portable pole antenna for each site, something BCL's network isn't really designed for.

"If we get even 100kbps [kilobits per second] then it's great. Usually we do a lot more than that, usually around 400 to 500kbps."

Seven different groups of contractors and subcontractors are now making use of the one site in Taranaki, something almost unthinkable in the days of copper wire.