Alaskan Energy Resources, Inc.

For the last decade, Alaskan Energy Resources Inc. (AER) has grown from a regionally focused supplier in the Alaskan oil and gas industry into a full service “point of contact” for the products and services required to drill and complete wells in remote and environmentally challenging locations. Today, the company, headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska, with a sales office in Denver and operations offices in North Dakota, is poised to bring the same support to the mining industry throughout Alaska and additional locations.

“Over the years, AER has been very fortunate to develop long-term strategic, collaborative relationships with our customers and manufacturers,” says AER operations vice president Lee Smith, who in 2001, founded the company with his wife, Betty Smith, president. “By listening to our customers’ short term objectives and long term needs, we work to develop cost effective solutions, combining our skills and knowledge with those of our suppliers to provide the proper solutions to meet our customers’ specific needs.”

The approach has worked well in serving Alaska’s oil and gas industry, where the company has earned a reputation for providing “what the customer needs, when and where it’s needed,” from drill bits and extended-reach drilling services, to torque and drag reduction equipment and production enhancement services.

“Sometimes on the North Slope, where the temperatures can reach 50 below, and in extremely remote locations, equipment has to be flown or be helicoptered in or brought in via ice road,” Smith points out. “These are extremely expensive wells, costing in excess of ten million dollars, so the equipment and people must perform, and safety is absolutely mandatory.”

After celebrating its 10th anniversary last year, AER, through its sister company Western Energy Products and Services, is bringing those same core philosophies of technical knowledge and prompt, professional service beyond Alaska into the Rockies, North Dakota and into the mining industry.

The husband-and-wife team have groomed AER into a niche provider willing to “do what it takes” for the customer, including locating hard-to-find equipment and at times, even developing and operating the equipment when necessary.

The company recently partnered with Tercel Oilfield Products, a leading international manufacturer for the upstream oil & gas industry, to introduce a new reaming tool designed to speed operations in a growing number of drilling applications in North Dakota and Alaska, opening an avenue for expansion into those high-growth areas.

“Tercel provided AER with the specialized reaming tool, and the two companies then teamed up with a willing customer to field-prove the technology,” Smith says. “Now we have them established and are running these specialized reamer on a regular basis.”

AER also has a swellable packer product for oil well fracturing applications. The packers are activated downhole to swell and are designed to seal a wellbore. AER is already working with an Australian coal mining company to possibly provide them with the new swellable packers for use in isolating and sealing off water zones.

From innovations such as swelling packers to the subtleties of drill bit design, AER has proved capable of handling the most complex challenges, often delivering record-setting performances as a result. “A single drill bit design may not in itself be considered complex,” Smith says. “But for example, drilling a horizontal well to 22,000 or 26,000 feet on the North Slope in the middle of winter on a remote location – that becomes a much more complex project.”

Smith says the company’s ability to service unique projects comes from the extensive and diverse experience of AER employees, who have a combined total of more than a century of downhole drilling experience as well as a number of patents for new technology.

As a distributor, AER’s expertise extends in both directions: End-users know they can turn to AER to locate those one-off products, while manufacturers also benefit from the company’s industry insight.

One unmistakable trend in the industry today is a heightened focus on safety and performance. Smith explains that customers are sometimes focusing less on the up-front cost of equipment, and more on how well the equipment actually works.

“People are starting to realize that even if you get a $25,000-a-day tool for free, if the tool doesn’t work and it puts you a day behind on a rig that costs $250,000 a day, you are losing money,” he says. “There is still a focus on cost, but in today’s market there is a greater focus on safety and performance.”

One of AER’s manufacturer partners, Hydratight, illustrates this concept well. Instead of requiring operators to manually remove, install and tighten the huge bolts found on a drilling rig, Hydratight has developed a series of hydraulic torque wrenches that attach to the bolts so they can be serviced with the flip of a switch, reducing the human contact and human error. This results in a much more efficient and safer operation.

AER also partners with companies like Brinker Technologies. This leading-edge company has developed technology that involves the use of new chemical polymers and platelets to seal leaks in pipes. AER has several technologies that can be applied to help repair and test pipe systems on land or offshore.

Smith expects such strategic partnerships will continue to yield benefits in the future as AER moves into new industries. Smith also notes that many of the products and companies AER is working with currently translate well into the mining industry.

“We have some products like the swellable packers, Hydratight and certain drill bits that are going to allow us to expand seamlessly into the mining market,” Smith says. “This is definitely a segment of our business that we want to grow more.

“Here in Alaska and in the Rockies, two of the largest industries are oil & gas and mining,” Smith points out. “And AER is well positioned to support both these industries.”