Rio:

Your point about matting and costs is an interesting one. All the leases in the area use matting to one extent or another depending on the conditions on the lease. Until recently almost all the matting was being made from - get this - oak shipped in from Louisiana and environs. Mats were manufactured in Grande Prairie, AB, and trucked in [roughly 100km one way].

At the same time, local loggers and mills have been out of work, and thousands of cubic metres of wood [spruce and aspen] felled in the clearing or roads and leases was being stacked and burned. Under pressure from the local Forestry Roundtable, backed by local government and, to a degree, OGC, matting and shoring materials are now being made from that wood by the smart companies...it's been good for the local economy which provides services to the patch, won some friends in the environmental world, and cut costs.

There you go...more than you ever wanted to know about drilling mats in the Horne River ;-)