Nabor's neighborhood
It's a big neighborhood for Nabors Industries, one of the premier oil and gas drilling companies in the world.
Nabors Alaska presently has three drilling rigs operating offshore in the Cook Inlet and one onshore. Additionally, Nabors is about to take over H & R Drilling which has two on shore rigs in operation which would up the total to five Nabors rigs operating in South Central Alaska, and another 17 on the North Slope, according to Jim Denny, President of Nabors Alaska.
Denny moved to Alaska from Scotland where he worked for Nabors operations in the North Sea. A native of Oklahoma and the son of a drilling rig owner, Denny says other areas of the world seem to be more pro-development than Alaska, "One of the things I saw working in both the Norwegian and the British sector of the North Sea is that they seem to be more pro-development than Alaska. It's tougher here to get permits to drill, tougher to get permits to develop different fields than it was in the North Sea," Denny recently told the Kenai Chapter of the Alliance.
Denny underscored Nabors strong commitment to running a safe and environmentally friendly operation in Alaska, "We are proud to announce that we've had the best safety record this year than ever before. Safety and the environmental side of our operations is the number one most important thing in our business," said Denny.
The advancement in technology not only adds to the environmental safety of drilling operations today compared to two decades ago, but it has also increased the success ratio of discoveries, "With the 3-D seismic and the technology available to our customers today, we can find oil and gas much easier then they could previously," added Denny.
The wells planned to be drilled for Unocal, Marathon and Phillips in the Cook Inlet seems to promise a very friendly future for the local Nabors neighborhood, and the support industry that supplies the drilling company.