Tag Archives: Charles MacFadyen

IMDEX focuses on drilling fluids, AMC BORE HOLE STABILISER release to boost productivity

IMDEX is talking up the use of drilling fluids as part of its holistic focus on improving drilling performance when out in the field.

The company’s drilling optimisation solutions combine best-in-class technologies, sensors, and motors to deliver improved performances, but, for IMDEX Drilling Optimisation General Manager, Charles Macfadyen, drilling fluids are at the start of the value chain, maximising the data delivered from the company’s technology and tools.

“Costs are always increasing, so the emphasis is on precision drilling: drilling smart metres and drilling efficiently,” Macfadyen said.

“It all relies on fluids to be able to do that. Fluids are an essential part of the drilling process with the potential to unlock hidden productivity when used effectively.”

He says while the oil and gas industry has long understood the importance of fluids and the skills of mud engineers, the understanding within the mineral exploration community has not been as widespread.

“There is a big difference in the cost of exploration drilling between oil and gas, and mineral exploration, but the science and logic will come to mining; the understanding that it’s far more than just a fluid, there’s an understanding of what equates to precision and enhanced performance that makes it special.”

Additional costs caused by higher operational standards, environmental restrictions and increased hole depths will continue – and could be the catalyst for a greater understanding of the part played by fluids, according to IMDEX.

IMDEX has around 100 drilling fluid products to cater for specific regional and global requirements, with the most recent addition being AMC BORE HOLE STABILISER™ (BHS).

BHS is a multifunctional product formulated specifically for air drilling applications, particularly drill and blast applications.

It helps prevent a wide range of down-hole problems including poor collaring, hole decay or sidewall instability, provides a degree of lubrication to the hole and will improve the lifting capacity of the air stream for cuttings transportation, according to the company.

Use of BHS in an underground mine in Western Australia resulted in an increase of up to 40% more metres drilled per day, reduced drilling consumables by up to 50%, improved load times and explosives use for explosive crews, and reduced HSE risks through less manual handling to mobilise and install casing, IMDEX says.

“For drill and blast, the side wall imperative is for both function and efficiency,” Macfadyen said. “BHS delivers improved productivity while using less explosives and less redrills.

“IMDEX drilling fluids are much more than a fluid – you actually get the knowledge that comes not just from making premium fluids and understanding that over more than 30 years, but also the knowledge that comes from our understanding of the drilling market, and of rock knowledge.

“Others don’t have that rock knowledge. It’s the tangible knowledge that at any given moment in time you know what you’re drilling through, the geological understanding, the resource definition, the granular knowledge behind how to optimise your fluids program to cater for that.

“Whether it’s orientation, mineralogy or any geological understanding it’s the essential knowledge that you need to develop a fluid or optimise a drilling program.

“It puts us in a leading position. Unlike others, IMDEX is able to leverage intimate rock knowledge, lab capabilities and global mud engineers to unlock the potential of any drilling program.”

IMDEX’s presence in 70% of major mining operations globally has allowed the company to foster this knowledge, according to Macfayden.

Mineralogy data needs a push upstream, IMDEX’s Dr Lawie says

The resources sector creates problems for itself from the first drill hole to production by not acquiring the right data at the right time, according to IMDEX Chief Geoscientist, Dr Dave Lawie.

Speaking ahead of an IMDEX webinar to be delivered to coincide with this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s virtual conference, Dr Lawie said that with the technology now available there was no longer any excuses for failing to have enough data to make informed decisions at every point in the mining process.

“The industry wants to find, define and mine ‒ but that has to be done with speed and precision and that can only be achieved with reliable data at the right time, which is as early in the process as possible,” Dr Lawie said.

The IMDEX PDAC webinar ‒ What’s the real value of data? Pulling Decision Points Upstream ‒ will feature presentations from IMDEX Drilling Optimisation General Manager, Charles MacFadyen (The importance of drilling smarter metres); Automated Mineralogy Global Product Manager, Sasha Pontual (Digital mineralogy: why it is important for exploration and mining); and Geochemist and Senior Software Analyst, Putra Sadikin (IMDEX ioGAS: Analytics from the upstream to your desk).

Dr John Steen, the Director at Canada’s Bradshaw Research Initiative for Minerals and Mining, has said lack of orebody knowledge leaves companies vulnerable to unforeseen costs which, in some cases, could threaten a mine’s viability.

Substantial write-downs have been attributed to less-than-expected ore grades, access issues which required revised mine planning, and process recovery problems, all of which could be avoided with better orebody data, according to IMDEX.

Dr Lawie said IMDEX technology enabled exploration companies to “drill smart metres” by drilling fast, efficiently and getting early-stage data.

“Doing that, which can include digital mineralogy, in the early phases allows you to get your exploration done, to test more targets and to evaluate them while you are involved in the drilling program,” he said.

At the “define stage”, resources are often not brought into production because there are complications apart from grade often related to mineral recovery, deleterious components, different levels of hardness, which stem from a lack of orebody knowledge, Dr Lawie added.

“Mineralogy is a key component in the define phase ‒ it is in exploration, but it comes into its own in the define phase ‒ because it has so many downstream impacts on mining,” Dr Lawie said. “Push all that information upstream and you can move through the resource definition phase into mining with a lot more confidence because you won’t be trying to fix a problem with mineralogy at the mining phase.

“That sounds trivial, but it’s not, and it’s the causation of a lot of stranded resources. People have not acquired adequate data early enough; they get downstream and want to develop a mine plan so they conduct metallurgical tests which reveal problems that they could already have known about.”

Referring to the third presentation in the webinar, Dr Lawie said IMDEX ioGAS™, an exploratory data analysis software application developed specifically for the resources industry, allowed complex data interrogation to be made quickly and easily.

“To be able to make import decisions in these data-rich environments ‒ and the amount of data is only going to increase ‒ you need to make extracting information accessible,” he said. “IoGAS has been doing that for more than a decade.”