Low Impact Testing of Oil Field Access Roads:Reducing Environmental Impacts in Desert Ecosystems

摘要

This project presents results from one part of the Disappearing Roads(DR),a multi-year project to design, test and evaluate multiple temporary and permanent road materials for use in harsh environmentally sensitive areas.DR is a critical component of the joint industry project Environmentally Friendly Drilling Program(EFD).http://www.efdsystems.org The DR project included a nationwide University competition sponsored by Halliburton to come up with potential designs as well as actual field trials of commercially available products,while the goal of the RPSEA sponsored portion of the project was to field test some of the products and designs identified in this competition. The specific objectives of the RPSEA Project are: Identify new technology that can reduce or eliminate the impact of drilling operations on environ-mentally sensitive areas. Design an EFD system using most promising technology Include environmental stakeholders in the designs After drilling operations are completed or suspended,roads are often remediated.This removal is intended to allow the recovery of the lands to a pre-use condition so as to minimize additional access. Experience has shown that such efforts pose difficulty,highlighting the complexity of potential long-term consequences of oil and gas operations.New systems have been tested to avoid this expense. Tests have been performed in a desert environment in West Texas as well as a second test located in a moderate climate with significantly more rain to determine the optimum operational conditions for the materials used.The project evolved to include roads made from recycled well cutting,plastic composite mats and mats made from waste materials.As in all projects the viability of any method is measured by the cost and benefit relationship.If the road material reduces cost either for construction or in the case of remediation and disposal of cuttings it could be considered a success.