Eva Eva X-1 Access Road and Bridge Construction
These images are taken in 2000 from the project to upgrade a dirt road in the Bolivian jungle. The road was required to access the site of an exploration well, Eva Eva X-1. The road extended 180 km and needed more than 100 bridges. These bridges were to be built using local timber. They had to last for more than a year. They needed to support loads of up to 40 tons to transport the drilling rig and to keep it supplied whilst drilling. These images were captured with a 2 mega pixel camera with data recorded on floppy disks.
The Rise and Fall of Apolo
At the time, I was the Operations Vice President of Apolo, a medium sized oil and gas service company providing drilling services. Bolivia had recently capitalised the state-owned oil and gas company, YPFB. A 32” gas pipeline was built to transport gas to Brazil. The industry went through a boom in activity. The drilling rig count went up to 28 drilling rigs. The oil and gas companies made some considerable discoveries and certified multiple times the gas reserves required for the gas sales contract to Brazil. As a result, in the space of a few months, the rig count dropped from 28 rigs to 5 rigs. Apolo was on the verge of going bankrupt and sold the company to MI Fluids.
The Rise of Bolser
The owner of Apolo, Pedro Pablo Hinojosa, turned his attention to Bolser, a small sister company dedicated to construction projects. After the sale of Apolo, I remained with Pedro Pablo and became Operations Vice President of Bolser. We learnt that Maxus, one of the oil and gas companies operating in Bolivia was to drill an exploration well in Beni, to the north of Santa Cruz. They were to require the services of a construction company to rehabilitate the access road and to build timber bridges to transport the rig into the location.
Enter Montegrande
I had recently met Brick Woodward, an American guy who had invested in a timber operation in the Beni called Montegrande. I had recommended by ex-brother-in-law, Luis Alberto Arandia, to work for Brick. Luis Alberto visited me in my office. I asked him where the timber operation was located. He pointed to a spot on the map located at the halfway point on the Eva Eva X-1 access road.
Bolser and Montegrande Partnership
Bolser was a small company and only had a few pieces of construction equipment. Montegrande owned bulldozers and front loaders which were used to maintain the access road. The road was the main access for the timber operation. Bolser and Montegrande formed a partnership and submitted a bid to Maxus to upgrade the road and build the bridges.
Eva Eva X-1 Access Road and Bridge Building Contract Award
Maxus had their preferred service companies and Bolser was not one of them. However, we were partners with Montegrande, the owner of the timber concession. They were the only company who could legally cut the timber to build the bridges. We were awarded the contract.
Eva Eva X-1 Project Location and Access
The access road started just south of a small town called San Ignacio de Moxos. This town is located 650 km by road from Santa Cruz de la Sierra. To drive from Santa Cruz to San Ignacio was a 12-hour journey. The road from Santa Cruz to Trinidad, the capital of Beni, was asphalt and in pretty good condition. From Trinidad to San Ignacio, the road was unpaved and had two river crossings across the Rio Mamoré. Transport across the river was by barge.
Dry Season and Wet Season
The Beni has a very marked dry season and wet season. During the wet season, much of the area where the exploration well was located floods. The project had to be carried out during the dry season which stretches from May to October. I made a number of trips to the location during the construction phase. Most of my trips were by road, but I also travelled on a couple of occasions by plane. The images of the river crossing on the Rio Mamoré were taken on one of these flights.
Bridge Building Challenge
Upgrading the road itself was fairly straightforward. It involved earth movement and road levelling. The real challenge was to build the bridges. Of the 100 or so bridges, most existed already, but would not take the required 40-ton loads. They had to be demolished and rebuilt. Many of the bridges had short spans, though 4 had 25 m spans and required splitting in two spans. The parapets were constructed with piles, driven in using a front loader or excavator with earth in the bucket to provide weight. Tree trunks were placed between the piles and the timber was held together using cables. Earth was compacted over tree trunks to provide the road surface.
Project Success
The original plan was to complete the access road and drill the well all during the dry season. However, the operation extended into the wet season. The bridges had to be maintained again in 2001 to be able to move the rig off location once the well was finished. Though Eve Eva X-1 was a dry well, the operation was a success with the bridges enabling the rig to move onto and off location.
Post Processing of Images
The images were touched up in Lightroom. One of the photos was taken into Photoshop to remove an object to simplify the photo.
These images were recorded in JPEG. If RAW existed back in 2000, I wasn’t aware of it. Lightroom Auto button was used as a starting point and mostly gave good results. Black Point and White point were adjusted to make the photos pop. Dehaze was used on the aerial photos and made the images much clearer.
No cropping at all was done on any of the photos. Nowadays, more than 90% of my photos have at least some small amount of cropping. When these photos were taken, we still had the mentality of taking film photos. Though film at least had up to 36 exposures, the camera used here could only fit 5 exposures on a floppy disk. I think in those days, we spent more time composing the shot. I’m sure you will agree that the compositions are really not too bad.
The photo of the barge on the Rio Mamoré was taken into Photoshop to remove an object, a small motorboat. I’ll leave it to you to say from where it was removed.