New technology in gyro-while-drilling

Trinidad and Tobago

Narvin Salick, engineer in charge at Gyrodata Trinidad, talks to The Energy Year about the company’s deployment of its Quest gyro-while-drilling (QGWD) technology and its plans for expanding activity in Guyana. Gyrodata provides high-precision gyroscopic surveying and wireline services to global oil and gas operations.

How did Gyrodata manage to enhance its resilience and continue operations over the last two years?
The pandemic caused a huge decrease in our revenue and activity but being an already small group locally we were fortunate to retain the majority of our personnel for this market.
We benefited from very good leadership. Our president, CEO and vice-president have been in the company for more than 30 years, so they have seen more than one downturn. They had the foresight to see what was going to happen after the pandemic and led the way, structuring the company and making decisions that allowed us to survive.
We introduced new technology during the pandemic period. We are now able to perform jobs remotely. We can do everything we need to do online by sending the equipment to the rig, and operating it remotely via the web.
This was in the developmental stage for some time and while we were able to operate efficiently with our existing Legacy tools and technology, the onset of Covid, triggered a fast-tracked implementation of our new SPEAR technology and by doing that we were able to come out stronger.

You’ve previously emphasised the importance of your GWD technology, and your plans for replacing all tools with the new QGWD system. Did you accomplish that goal?
That’s still on the agenda, but 2021 was the first time we used Quest gyro-while-drilling technology in Trinidad. It was with a major IOC and the deployment was a success. The older version of the tool which we are using now we call Legacy Gyro, and the new version is called the Quest Gyro. It’s basically going from a mechanical device to a solid-state electronic device.
Globally that company has decided that they no longer want the Legacy tools, so I expect that all jobs we do with them going forward will have to be with the Quest GWD technology. This year, we are seeing that more companies in Trinidad and Guyana are requesting the QGWD. We are actually going to deploy it in Guyana with ExxonMobil soon.

Did you manage to further expand your activity in Guyana?
We didn’t expect so much work in Guyana, but as it turns out, the entirety of our work in 2022 has been in Guyana. This is likely because the more they go into developmental wells, the more they will require our services. Because of our performance both locally and globally, we have seen an increase in our number of jobs. Our track record is very good, and this is a reason why clients are requesting our services.

What potential opportunities does the 2022 onshore and near-shore bid round open up for the services sector, and how well positioned is Gyrodata to work with potential winners?
Regarding the bid round, we work with all the participating companies. Whoever wins, we are more than prepared to work with any one of them in terms of deploying our assets and personnel. We are currently in the process of expanding our team in Trinidad.

How would you compare your activity in frontier markets such as Guyana and Suriname to that seen in Trinidad?
We expect that the bulk of our work is going to be in Guyana. We are currently able to do all of our equipment testing in Trinidad, and then ship these tools to the rigs in Guyana. However, eventually we’re going to have to be in Guyana for the testing and then send it to the rig, so we may have to expand our testing facilities to Guyana.
However, we still plan to keep our base in Trinidad, because we still need to support our local entities/clients. We will need to have support in both Trinidad and Guyana, as well as in Suriname, because we have our first GWD job in Suriname expected at the end of 2022. We have put a lot of focus on Guyana and we are actually trying to utilise the new QGWD technology there to increase the efficiency of our services. We are set and ready.

Read our latest insights on:

• Guyana
• Suriname
• Trinidad and Tobago