Brownline Canada has successfully contributed to the Rocky View Section of the Western Alberta System Mainline Loop with two drills on two different locations. These drills were part of the completion of the West Path Delivery Project, which is in service as of June 2020.
The Rocky View Section of the Western Alberta System Mainline Loop consists of a 21 kilometer stretch of 42” NPS x 22mm Natural Gas pipeline, with a maximum operating pressure of 5,825 kPa. 6 kilometers of the route goes through Cochrane and runs parallel to an existing pipeline utility corridor. The remaining 15 kilometers also run parallel to existing infrastructure and continue south through Rocky View County.
The first job in this trajectory was a 650 meter long drill with our Drillguide Gyro Steering System at 18 meters below the proposed Springbank Reservoir’s channel. The Springbank Off-stream Reservoir project is set up to provide flood protection for the city of Calgary and other communities located downstream at the Bow River in Alberta. Together with Glenmore Reservoir in Calgary it will be able to accommodate 88 million m3 of flood water, which will avoid the damage as suffered during the 2013 flooding of Bow River.
The second job took place in the quaint city of Cochrane, Alberta. This 1039 meter intersect crossing was set over 50 meters below the Bow River, within the city limits. The planned crossing was designed with a 4° horizontal curve section in order to navigate the pipeline crossing around existing above ground infrastructure and land ownership compliance. Due to the geometry of the planned trajectory, it was executed to intersect within the bore path’s exit tangent at an angle of 14°.
The Springbank Reservoir drill was set out under a wetland and the Cochrane intersect took place in a highly congested area with several urban obstacles along the drill path. Besides making conventional tracking of the drill head impossible, this also meant that monitoring the annular pressure to reduce the risk of inadvertent fluid releases while drilling was of extreme importance. By using our Drillguide Gyro Steering System, combined with the Radar for the intersect, both drills were completed successfully in a safe and timely manner.