With the crossing beneath the Beaver River in the Canadian province of Alberta a Direct Pipe® premiere succeeded with flying colors. 20 kilometers northeast of the town of Bonnyville the innovative pipeline installation technology from Herrenknecht was used in Canadian soil for the first time. The 340 meter long section under the Beaver River is part of the Inter Pipeline Cold Lake and Polaris expansion program, in which 560 kilometers of oil pipeline are being installed between Edmonton and Fort McMurray. With the extension the client is expanding its capacities for transporting bitumen extracted from oil sands in Cold Lake.
Drilling with the AVN800 machine and the HK750PT Pipe Thruster began on August 24, 2013. At a rapid pace the AVN machine dug its way through under the river. Top advance rates of 68 meters per day contributed to the completion of the crossing beneath the Beaver River on September 8 already after just 13 days of drilling. Thanks to the Direct Pipe® Technology, with the breakthrough the pipeline installation was also complete: the prefabricated pipeline with a diameter of 42 inches was pushed into the borehole by the Pipe Thruster, in turn pushing the microtunnelling machine welded to the tip of the pipeline forward with a thrust of up to 750 tonnes.