Premier Directional Drilling

Intro

HISTORY
Premier Directional Drilling was founded in April 2012. It experienced exciting growth in that year of operations, achieving a footprint of 27 follow-me rigs and employing over 100 people. Just like that first year, Premier is on track for a great 2018. Our footprint in Q1 is nearly 50% higher than that 2012 high of 27, which continues to fuel our relentless passion for excellence.

CULTURE
Premier is committed to providing services that enhance and optimize our customer's performance. Success depends on our ability to consistently satisfy changing requirements. We are committed to excellence in everything we seek to do. We aim to do business in a consistent and transparent way with all our clients. We want our customers to place a great deal of trust in us and respect our consistent dedication and insight into their needs. We strive to behave in an ethical, professional manner at all times. We will strive to hire and retain the most qualified people available and to maximize their opportunities for success through training and development. We are committed to maintaining a safe work environment enriched by diversity and characterized by open communication, trust and fair treatment. We will maintain high ethical standards; obeying all applicable laws, rules and regulations. Above all other objectives, we are dedicated to safe and environmentally responsible operations. We aspire to achieve our goals by flawlessly executing our business plan and adhering to these guiding principles.

VISION
Premier Directional Drilling will be acknowledged by our clients and stakeholders as the preferred directional drilling services provider in North America.

MISSION
Premier will add value to our clients’ projects by providing unsurpassed service and quality at a competitive cost per foot. Our ability to execute at the required level is because of our key assets—our people. It is their consistent commitment to excellence which creates long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with Premier’s clients and stakeholders.

CORE VALUES

Service

Ethics

Commitment

Integrity

Innovation

Teamwork

Honesty

Communication

Accountability

Operations

We are everywhere. We are Premier!

Premier Directional Drilling can be here, there, and everywhere you want to drill. Our areas of specialty include:

Marcellus / Utica
Mid-Continent
Permian

Bakken

DJ / Niobrara

Eagle Ford

Technology

THE SHARPEST TOOLS IN THE SHED:

Premier has adopted a strategy of owning MWD technology and strategic rentals for drilling motors. Our primary mission is to be first to market with technologies that impact our customers positively. With new technology and innovation switching from super majors to smaller independent companies, Premier has taken sizeable efforts to partner with, assist with launch and deploy capital early to those in the innovation space.

Our current MWD technology backbone is EVO ONE™ which is designed and built from Evolution Engineering, is just one of these independent innovators. As the early adopter of EVO ONE from very early days of field trials in 2013 to present, Premier prides itself as the go-to knowledge user in the directional world for EVO ONE’s Unified Telemetry system. We have well over 100,000 hours on the system and have developed best practices alongside Evolution for training our people, maintaining equipment and rolling out updates and new options properly to our customers. As of Q1, we have 28 EVO ONE kits utilized in field operations, nearly 70 strings of tools!

Major benefits of the system:

Two telemetries: rotary style pulse and electromagnetic (EM), and can be utilized at the same time or independently as required.

Durable: Rigid 2.5” probe diameter is a 40% increase in diameter from other tool platforms and only 15’ long.

Wrapped in Plastic: The probe has a heat shrink barrier to shield the EM signal to just transmitting poles of the tool, eliminating lost EM from the rest of the probe.

Survey During Connection: EM sends the surveys during connection, eliminating any non-productive time waiting for surveys after making the connection.

Ease of Troubleshooting: Onsite technicians use the data from pulse to diagnose issues with EM and vice versa. This helps to narrow problems quickly. It also helps to keep drilling using the telemetry that is working! Not something available on other systems at present.

The Trident is our industry standard positive pulse platform. We have shortened the system to one interconnect so the system is less than 20’ including batteries. The system is designed to handle drilling applications where EM is not an option, such as deep Bakken, or Midcontinent plays. We utilize deep board level testing protocols to ensure potential problems with circuitry misfires are captured at early stages in the lab before they ever make it to the field.

Major Benefits of System:

Short Tool: Design compacts all sensors, intelligence and batteries into a shorter length allowing for less “wet noodle” effect from shock and vibration
Retrievable: When needed or required for your program
Efficient: Power draw is lower and consumes less battery power while still delivering superior pulse results

Our hot hole TridentFire is currently in development. This platform is being built to compete in applications greater than 300F (150C) and less than 392F (200C). Advancements in electronics, sensors, and battery cells have provided us the ability to bring a true hot hole solution forward.

Motors
Our rental vs. ownership of drilling motors has helped us be one of the largest users of major motor suppliers like NOV and Baker Hughes, two of our prominent motor vendors. We employ internal technical staff to audit and provide service quality reporting for accountability of the vendors. The versatility in motor rentals options allows us to deploy the right motor to the right application.

Both MWD and Drilling Motor functions have detailed tracking throughout maintenance and field within software systems used by Premier.

Services

DIGITAL BLUE PRINTING™
"The process of digital blue printing is something quite novel in our approach to repair, maintenance and routine testing of equipment," according to Tim Curran, adding, "This is something you may see in tier 1 businesses to weed out potential electronics failures commonly seen in MWD tools, and we use it on every tool coming back to the shop."

Digital Blue Printing is the process of screening electronics through temperature and power cycling, ensuring the boards are operating within proper parameters through a series of routine trigger events. According to Mr. Curran, "every electronic circuit has a life span that begins with new manufacturing and an operating life that is impacted by the environments seen in downhole drilling conditions. The continuous process of DBP has eliminated many potential failures and instead categorizes them as near miss. Eliminating catastrophic downhole electronics events is worth the added screening and testing we put these tools through."

NEW TECHNOLOGY
"Premier considers itself an early adopter of technology, "It is mission critical to be on the cutting edge of advancements in technology for our customers," says Michael Kennedy, CEO and President. When it bought the first of its EVO ONE "Unified Telemetry" kits in early 2015, it became the first US based directional company to own and service the tools from Evolution Engineering (distributed by Inpetro Energy). "There has been a learning curve to the technology, but that is to be expected with something so completely unique and different," adding, "the product has become such a game changer to speed, data density, shock management, continuous inclination, and just allowing for EM in places we could never get EM before... this is really the future in terms of MWD technology."

Premier has also added mobile software development to its portfolio: health & safety, asset tracking, real-time performance metrics and soon to be an integrated gamma logging system. These apps will provide a safer environment for our employees, keep our product quality controls at high levels, and provide a proactive approach to understanding leading indicators of success and potential failure.