Firms plan 'man camp' to elevate comfort level at high altitude
Houston Business Journal - August 10, 2007
Houston Business Journal
ConocoPhillips Co. is setting up a "man camp" to offset manpower shortages caused by inhospitable conditions in the Colorado Rockies.
The Houston-based oil giant is working with two global companies with local offices to bring a little of the high life to the lofty locations. Production Services U.S. Inc., a subsidiary of Production Services Network, and HB Rentals are teaming up to build and manage 54 prefabricated housing modules for temporary living quarters at the ConocoPhillips Mesa camp site in Rio Blanco County -- elevation 8,400 feet.
With oil prices remaining high, oil and gas reserves once too expensive to extract have become economically viable, and companies are going deeper offshore and higher in the mountains to drill. And the higher they go, the colder it gets.
"There were some sub-20-below days this past winter," says Joe Versnel, vice president of operations for PSN's North American headquarters in Houston. Now one of Scotland's largest privately held companies, Aberdeen-based PSN bought its way out of KBR Halliburton last year for $280 million. While PSN will manage the temporary living quarters -- or "man camp," as such sites are known -- in the Piceance Basin of Northwest Colorado, HB Rentals is about to start building the 54 modules at the company's facility in Diboll, Texas.
"The goal is to have the camp occupied by Dec. 1," Versnel says. "It's usually a 12- to 18-month process, which we've compressed to three to four months. There's no room for error." Deidre Toups, a vice president at HB Rentals, says the project will be the largest man camp the company has ever done. "We have had to work closely with both state and local officials to ensure a fully code-compliant camp," she says.
Site work, to be completed by PSN throughout August, includes leveling the ground, relocating an access road, and obtaining myriad permits. "At full capacity, the TLQ will centralize the work force of ConocoPhillips' drilling operations in the Piceance Basin area," says Justin McCoy, project director for HB Rentals. "This will drastically decrease the traffic impact, land disturbance impact and emissions impact of the current separate housing crew camps on location today."
McCoy says it will also improve safety by housing all personnel on the same site as the EMT-staffed medical facilities, and will include a heliport for emergency evacuations. The high life
In addition to providing the creature comforts -- food, water, warmth and wireless Internet -- the 16-acre Mesa camp will have a recreation facility with a pool table, meeting and office space, a kitchen and dining complex and four dormitories, including a separate female dorm and a handicap-accessible dorm.
The initial phase involves more than 30,000 square feet of living area for 154 personnel, and the final phase adds about 250 people and another 15,000 square feet. "We'll start staging the equipment and kick off the project in the first part of September," HB Rentals' Toups says. The units will be trucked from the Diboll plant to the Rockies and assembled at the site. "They are complete units that basically need to be tied together," she says.
Once connected to the water and sewer systems and linked by adjoining hallways, the camp will be ready to open. For Toups, the commissary -- where employees can rent DVDs and buy other consumable goods -- will be one of the more unique aspects of the camp. "There will be a lot of luxury items that make the living accommodations that much more comfortable for the staff and employees," she says. Surrounded by perimeter fencing, the only way in and out will be past a manned guard shack.
HB Rentals has been in the temporary accommodations business since the 1970s, typically supplying mobile home-type structures for onshore well sites. In May 2006, the company acquired Riverview Rentals Inc., of Riverton, Wyo., which builds skid houses for cold weather. "We have since expanded that fleet by over 100 units," Toups says.
PSN camp management operations will include catering, laundry and transportation to and from the drill sites in the area using eight modified Ford Expedition XLTs. Although details of the contract have yet to be hammered out -- ConocoPhillips has declined to comment, citing company policy about ongoing projects -- the modules either will be sold in total for about $5.2 million or leased for 10 years, or five years with a renewal option for another five.
Given a 10-year shelf-life, Toups says, the modules can be overhauled and refurbished. "The more costly components pretty much last a lifetime," she says.
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