Conventional Oil and Gas Forest Reclamation

Reclaiming the thousands of abandoned well sites in Alberta’s boreal forest is vital to the forest’s long-term health.
NAIT Boreal Research Institute reclamation program is a high-impact research initiative that: positions industry and reclamation companies to meet the new reclamation standards; builds innovation in northwestern Alberta. The program strives to provide cost effective reclamation methods, products and education to help industry obtain reclamation certification in the new era of forest reclamation.
The Conventional Oil and Gas Reclamation applied research program is partitioned into the many major themes from which four majors are currently the focus of our activities: Site and Soil Treatment, Site Re-vegetation, Vegetation Management, Site Assessment

Site Treatment: Soil Compaction Testing

The operational and research objectives are designed to provide practitioners with tools for efficient and effective compaction assessment and de-compaction prescriptions. Activities include: Quantitative evaluation of currently available wellsite decompaction treatments; Develop methods that practitioners can utilize to estimate the severity and extent of compaction and thereby the need for de-compaction. More specifically the research focuses on: Quantifying the soil physical changes as a result of soil de-compaction methods: Visual changes, Relative bulk density, Carbon, and Nutrition (focus on N initially).Quantifying the soil physical changes as a result of wellsite disturbance as compared to undisturbed similar ecosites: Visual changes, Relative Bulk Density, Carbon, and Nutrition. BRI is currently testing the effectiveness of the RipPlow as a soil tilling tool to prepare compacted soil.
Two technical notes have been developed for the proper use of the RipPlow under non-frozen conditions and under frozen conditions. Soil retrospective of existing decompaction work: A wide-variety of decompaction tools have been utilized to deal with disturbed soils both in the oilfield and in forestry. BRI is conducting a retrospective comparison of soil compaction tools that have been used in northwestern Alberta.
The tools that are been compared include: Rip-Plow, Straight Shank, Winged Shank, Frozen, topsoil Cutter, Roto-Spik , Backhoe Bucket.

Vegetation Management

The overall intent of this project is to test the effectiveness and feasibility of alternative vegetation management options and examine the success of vegetative propagation of native shrub species. The objectives of BRI vegetation management trials include: Examine higher density balsam poplar planting and look at the response in terms of: Reducing the density and competition of undesirable species. Achieving accelerated crown closure.

· Test the effectiveness and longevity of recycled paper-based brush mats in reducing competition of herbaceous vegetation.

· Explore direct planting vegetative cuttings (stem or root) of three shrubs and one tree species.

· Test the effectiveness of vexar-netting in reducing ungulate browsing of aspen.

· Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of methods.

BRI has developed the following Technical Notes to guide reclamation field Practitioners:

· Principles of Vegetation Management describes the fundamentals of successful vegetation management and provides linkages to both the vegetation establishment technical note and to operational vegetation management treatments and processes.

· Vegetation Management Treatment Options identifies an array of vegetation management treatment categories and discusses their strengths and weaknesses.

· Operational Vegetation Management provides guidance on prescribing; integrating and deploying vegetation management treatments to cost effectively achieve reclamation objectives.

· Special Considerations in Herbicide Use provides specific guidance around herbicide use for vegetation management - particularly with respect to regulatory requirements, safety, environmental protection and prescription.

Re-vegetation

An effective, reliable and relatively inexpensive means to achieve a minimum of 25% canopy cover of woody species or a minimum stem/plant count of 5 stems per assessment point area as required under the 2010 reclamation criteria is to plant seedlings and/or deciduous cuttings. In 2009 BRI established four research sites on Shell’s conventional abandoned wellsites.
The objective of this research trial was to compare the performance of plants growing in areas with different microsite preparation techniques to each other and also to the areas with no site preparation (control site). The site preparation techniques include: Rip plow, Soil mounding, and Soil mixing. Tree and shrub species tested on these soil treatments include: Red-osier Dogwood, Aspen, Black Spruce, and White Spruce. BRI has developed a technical note on Woody Vegetation Establishment that provides a brief description of the planting process and identifies resources that may simplify obtaining planting stock, finding a tree planting contractor, and other logistic details of planting.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 849