Comeau, Mr. Larry J.

Larry Comeau is currently president of Computalog Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Precision Drilling Corporation, and also holds the position of senior vice president, Oilfield Specialty Services for Precision Drilling Corporation. Previously, he held several executive positions with Sperry-Sun Drilling Systems. During this period, he was instrumental in setting up the Downhole Tool Development Group.

Becoming an Industry Leader

Under his leadership, this group became known as one of the industry leaders in research, development and manufacturing of emerging oilfield technologies. Comeau not only established this group; he was directly involved in many of the projects and has approximately 21 patents in his name.

When the Nisku-based Downhole Tool Development Group was formed in 1994, Sperry-Sun had net exports of several million dollars. By 1997, exports were in excess of $50 million with product going to approximately 15 countries. Comeau was instrumental in the development of multilateral systems; a technology that permits several branches to be drilled to multiple reservoir locations out of one main well bore. World Oil has described this technology as having a similar impact on drilling and oil recovery as horizontal drilling had in the early ’80s.

New Technology

More recently, he can be credited with the development of measurement-while-drilling sensors and growing the market from essentially nothing to approximately US $70 million worldwide. These sensors provide valuable information from the drilling hole, so that drilling can be optimized. The cost saving to the industry in terms of faster overall drilling time, reduced tool failures and extending new drilling limits runs into the hundreds if millions, if not billions.