SURFACE DRILLING
Drilling down further
Surface drilling technologies are not standing still – from electrification to greater autonomy, all of the major OEMs are helping the mining industry put the next generation of capabilities in place. Paul Moore reports
To get the big picture on surface drilling trends and roadmaps, there is no substitute for talking directly to those with overall directional responsibility from the major suppliers. At CONEXPO 2026 in Las Vegas, IM sat down with Omar Allel, who recently became the President of the Surface division at Epiroc. As such, his responsibility includes all of the surface drilling products and technologies including rotary blasthole drills and crawler boom top hammer and DTH rigs; as well as surface exploration and RC rigs. Allel is originally from Chile and his career in Epiroc began in 2001 with what was then Atlas Copco – initially in the surface business until 2011 as Business Line Manager, Surface Drilling – first in Chile then in Garland, Texas – then he returned to Chile as Business Line Manager, Underground Rock Excavation from 2011-2017. Between 2017 and 2024 he was Business Line Manager, Service & Parts then VP Marketing for Parts and Service for both North and South America based in both Chile and then the US. He left Epiroc for just under two years in a stint in another industry then joined again in the current position.
In Allel’ s role he spends a lot of time talking to mining customers – so what are some of the trends he sees today in the surface drilling space? Yes – there have been some big electric rotary drill deals – notably the 2025 contract with Fortescue worth A $ 350 million involving the supply of
Fully electric Epiroc Pit Viper 351 E operating at Boliden Aitik
around 50 electric drill rigs- to help the iron ore mining major eliminate its emissions. It includes both the autonomous cable-electric
Omar Allel, President Epiroc Surface division with Paul Moore, IM Editorial Director platform drill Pit Viper 271 E as well as autonomous battery-electric contour drills.
But Fortescue is one of the more progressive and ambitious miners in terms of committing to full fleet electrification – what is the general appetite for electric surface drills like in mining? Allel:“ I think right now, it is actually becoming significant, because I think everybody sees the potential of electrification – especially combined with automation – not just in terms of reducing emissions but also its role in helping increase efficiency and helping the world meet demand for all the critical minerals that we need.”
However, he added that when these discussions began, there were also initial concerns – related to both autonomy and electrification- specifically related to whether productivity and efficiency would be affected, plus how the safety aspect would be dealt with and whether there would increased costs.“ So, it has been a journey – but today we have progressed to where autonomous drills are being deployed in most parts of the world. Looking at autonomous drills for example, we are now operating at more than 35 minesites. This reflects the fact that the productivity, safety and cost efficiency results are now well proven – including at some locations being able to reduce drill fleet sizes and achieve the same results. And it’ s not all about the Pilbara anymore. It’ s everywhere you have big mining sites including Chile, Australia, Brazil, Canada, the US, South Africa and many others.”
Electrification of drills is still driven mainly by cable power as that is still the only real option to deliver power to large rotary platform drills – though the relative demand for cable models versus conventional diesel models is increasing.“ Once you start to look at taking away the cable it is a challenge. Pit Vipers are big machines and without cable power you are still looking at using quite powerful engines that you still cannot efficiently replace with battery power only so in our R & D we are now looking more at hybrid solutions, including batteries with fuel cells or batteries with smaller engines. With some of the crawler drills, we can already use a battery for tramming and for some of the drilling but to also then
50 International Mining | MAY 2026