What a difference two years makes. The last time The Roughneck visited High Arctic Well Control Inc., the Red Deer-headquartered company employed 45 and had operation centres in Brooks and Grande Prairie. This dynamic and progressive well control company had recently introduced its innovative Rigless Snubbing System - a combination of a service rig and a snubbing unit - and had two units at work. In addition, the company, also expert in freezing in hot tapping, had six rig assist units.

Today, however, everything has increased dramatically. High Arctic has 70 employees and has added two more operation centres - in Nisku and Neuquen, Argentina. The company, which spent $1 million upgrading its Grande Prairie operation centre in late 1999, has doubled its Rigless Snubbing System units to four. There has, however, been a name change. "To better reflect exactly what it does, it's now called the Stand Alone Snubbing System. It's a proven system, thanks in part to Roger Walker and Barry Brown, both of PanCanadian Petroleum, and Bernie Brissard of AEC at Suffield," says High Arctic President Jed Wood. "The Stand Alone Snubbing System has been at work on more than 1,000 wells."

The company has more than doubled its rig assist units, to 14, mostly as a result of the October 1999 acquisition of Edmonton-based Venture Well Control, which added 12 employees and six units. "The transition has been virtually seamless since Venture's staff are highly trained and the units are identical to ours," says Wood. "This deal also opened more of northeastern Alberta for us." Since that acquisition, High Arctic's utilization rate has been over 90%.

And more change is coming. "This summer we'll be building a brand new 20,000-square-foot operations centre in Red Deer, complete with a state-of-the-art training facility," explains High Arctic Marketing Manager Bruce Thiessen.

Building a Training Facility While High Arctic has almost doubled in size every year since its inception in 1994 (it acquired Hi Tech Well Control of Red Deer in 1995 and Siberian Well Service of Brooks in 1997), the one constant in all this growth and change is High Arctic's management team: Wood, Thiessen, and Ken Embury, Vice President. All three grew up in Red Deer and know the Canadian oilpatch well.