Less than two weeks shy of a year after their shop burnt to the ground, Betts Drilling moved into their new replacement shop on Dec. 19.
“We just walked in the door,” Bob Betts, general manager, said on Dec. 21. “Almost a year to the day. Dec. 30 was when we had the fire, and Dec. 19 was when we moved back in. It took a lot to get it all back up.
The place still very much has the new shop smell, with spotless floors in the main shop area. Except for the colour scheme of some of the interior paint, the place is identical to the previous building.
That’s by design, quite literally. “We never changed anything. Everything is all entirely the same,” Betts said. “It was set up perfect for what we were doing before, so we never really changed anything, and the design stayed the same, which made it easier and faster for the build, because we had the original blueprints and everything. It was basically take the blueprints and start building.”
The shop is 60x120 feet, and the office is 30x90 feet.
“I’ve got three rigs booked for January, and still looking for work for one more, for that time slot. Hopefully we’ll pick up something in the last minute.
The first quarter of 2018 is expected to see a substantial uptick in drilling, something that happened in the first quarter of 2017. Asked where they will find employees as more rigs go to work, Betts said, “So far, we’ve been pretty lucky. We’ve had a lot of loyal employees. They stuck with us through the hard times, and hopefully they hang in there with us. It is going to get busier. It is definitely the guys that have more work are going to get all the hands, for sure, because they can keep their guys busy.”
With new budgets, Betts said there’s a little bit of a spike. “The phone’s not ringing off the hook yet. There’s work there, but not any new players yet. Still there’s lots of buyouts and guys getting bigger. I think it’ll be a copycat of 2017. It does depend on the oil. The oil price did move up, and the activity never really shot right up because of it.
“We’ll just see what 2018 does, and I think the number for 2018 will be around US$61 a barrel. We’ll see what oil companies can do with that.”
