Entro - Walking Rig Designers
Entro Industries (entro-eng.com) specializes in figuring out how to move large, heavy equipment that people never intended to be mobile, says Shawn Smith, president of the Oregon-based engineering and design firm. Entro has serviced the heavy haul, aircraft and drilling industry since 1994, led by Smith’s father Harlan, founder of the firm. Shawn joined his father in 2010. “We decided to change the focus of the business. We decided to take the lead position on contracts.” With the help of Western Fabrication, a custom welding and machine shop, the Smith’s applied their new ideas to the drilling rig industry. The team now designs and fabricates custom and bolt-on systems capable of changing a stationary drilling rig into a walking unit. Since 2010, Smith estimates the team has been directly involved with 180 to 200 rigs, performing either a retrofit of an existing unit or the design of a newly built rig. “We’ve been at it one a week for at least the last year,” Smith says.
In addition to the drilling firms heavily leveraged in the Bakken, such as Nabors Drilling and Precision Drilling, Entro has also provided its services for rig operators working in Alaska, Canada, South America, the Middle East and the entire Lower 48.
Entro's main product is called the Kingpin system. The Kingpin combines a high-capacity jack and a walking foot into a singular space. The equipment package can be installed directly onto a rig. Using a ratchet or a remote control, an operator can move an entire drilling rig in any direction once the Kingpin system is installed. “We have actually removed other walking systems from rigs and replaced them with ours,” Smith says.
The system is a walk-and-roll set-up, utilizing a large stomper foot directly under a hydraulic jack. Because the stomper foot can shift positions, by roughly 2 feet, in any direction from where the base of the hydraulic jack is attatched to the top of the stomper, the system can move a rig. The jack deploys, lifting the entire rig off the surface, a rolling mechanism rolls the rig to follow the placement of the stomper while the rig is still in the air and then the jack lowers the rig directly above the position of the stomper. The process is repeated until the destination has been reached. “You can actually spin it in a circle,” Smith says. The beauty of the system is often seen in difficult well-site layouts or when settling under a rig mat occurs, he says.
Entro’s success with the walking systems has required Western Fabrication to update its abilities and its approach towards safety and quality. The company recently completed the American Petroleum Institute’s 4F Monogram certification program. The certification is the result of a yearlong audit to ensure the facility and its employees—from designers to fabricators—meet the stringent requirements of the API. In 2014, Entro's sales will increase by 75 percent over the previous year.
-Luke Geiver
For more information, visit www.entro-eng.com or call 503-356-8888.