It takes seriously big hardware and a team of experts to drill a 2km deep hole. It's little wonder then that Top Energy turned to Canada's second largest land-based drilling contractor when it needed to drill two reinjection wells at its Ngawha Power Station.
The electricity generator, which is expanding the station's power capacity from 10 megawatts to 25MW, has contracted Ensign Energy Services to drill the wells which allow fluid used to power turbines to be returned to Ngawha's underground geothermal reservoir.
It will take Ensign about a month to extend a 650-metre well to a depth of 1.85km says Minoru Frederiksens who is managing Top Energy's $68 million Ngawha expansion project.
The company will use a 34-metre-tall, Kremco rig to drill and line the well with a 178-cm diameter pipe before relocating the rig to a second drill site.
The 600 horsepower rig can drill to a depth of 2.6 km and is one of only three double-pipe rigs operating in New Zealand.
The last time a rig of this size was used at Ngawha was in the 1980s when the power station was built.
Ensign has more than 300 drill and work-over rigs in 10 countries.
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