Large Scale Oil Field Reclamation Management

In the early 2000s, natural gas producers discovered abundant new unconventional gas resources in the Rocky Mountain West, leading to rapid development of new gas fields and expansion of existing fields. The regulatory requirements for these developments require a higher level of attention to reclamation to return disturbed areas back to their original use, primarily wildlife habitat, as quickly as possible. These semi-arid, high desert environments are challenging for reclamation, making compliance with the higher reclamation standards difficult for most operators, who turned to KC Harvey for solutions.  KC Harvey took a two-pronged approach to find a solution: first, develop procedures to prevent soil degradation on new well pad locations, and second, mitigate the contamination that was preventing plant growth on existing locations.  Our science-based approach inspired the development of systematic pre-construction soil salvage procedures that inventory suitable soils prior to construction, and salvage those soils for reclamation. Concurrently, we developed soil amendment procedures to mitigate sodic soil conditions at well pads where sodic sub-soil had been mixed with and contaminated the salvaged soil. Implementation of the pre-construction soil salvage plans on new locations and treating sodic soils with amendments on old locations had an immediate positive impact on reclamation success and allowed natural gas producers to meet their reclamation goals.

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