Technical HDD
The record

2,108.8 km across 5,722 bores.

The operating record of Technical HDD between 2005 and 2018, from five bases, with a thirteen-rig fleet. It is the reason the advice is worth retaining. It is not a claim about anything we will build for you, because we no longer build.

Year by year

Installed length, bore count, average bore and longest single installation, as logged.

YearJettedMud motor & hammerTotalBoresAverageLongest
200557.51 km19.44 km77.15 km359215 m554 m
2006106.83 km21.86 km128.70 km462279 m811 m
200792.39 km24.15 km116.54 km495236 m676 m
200871.22 km17.54 km88.77 km367242 m941 m
200961.54 km21.19 km82.72 km304272 m1,034 m
2010103.26 km35.44 km138.70 km387359 m1,677 m
201171.53 km60.71 km132.24 km327405 m1,484 m
201283.73 km71.33 km155.06 km366424 m1,766 m
2013157.60 km48.43 km206.04 km414498 m1,108 m
2014118.12 km62.61 km180.72 km450402 m1,987 m
2015195.41 km16.12 km211.53 km469451 m2,439 m
2016237.13 km7.53 km244.66 km537456 m2,946 m
2017256.37 km2.25 km258.61 km532487 m3,217 m
201885.37 km1.99 km87.36 km253346 m3,204 m
Total1,698.21 km410.59 km2,108.80 km5,722362 m3,217 m

What the numbers say

The trend that matters

Average bore length rose from 215 m to nearly 500 m

That is the whole story of the practice in one line. The same crews, in the same ground, more than doubled what a single pull could achieve — through tooling, fluid discipline and hole conditioning rather than through bigger machines.

The method shift

Mud motor work fell away as jetting extended

In 2011 the split was roughly even. By 2017 jetted compaction work was more than a hundred times the motor footage. As the compaction method reached further, it displaced the slower, costlier technique wherever the ground allowed it.

The reach

Longest installation went from 554 m to 3,217 m

A six-fold increase over thirteen years. The 3,217 m bore — NPS 8 through glacial till on an 18-inch hole, jetted — remains the longest on the record.

How to read this honestly

The 2,108.8 km total counts each bore once. Elsewhere the same record is partitioned into directional crossings and trenchless pipeline segments, and those two figures are a division of this total, not an addition to it. We mention it because the industry habit of adding partitions together is how a real record becomes an unbelievable one.

Over the same period the log records 206 fluid releases across 5,722 bores, with the release ratio improving from roughly one in every fifteen to twenty bores at the start to one in seventy-odd by 2016–17. That improvement is the part we would point to, not a claim of never having had one.

The crossing register The safety record The fleet