Home > Services:Markets > Oil Sands >

Integrated Landscape Management

With high public expectations for meeting and exceeding regulatory requirements and with mounting pressures of cumulative effects in the oil sands regions of Alberta, innovative environmental management strategies are required. Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) is a strategy that can help oil sands operators reduce the cumulative effects of their project.

How AXYS Accomplishes ILM

Coordination:

1. Facilitate planning among operators using the same land base.
2. Identify ways and means to minimize environmental impacts.

Collaboration:

3. Facilitate the sharing of development plans.
4. Analyze the degree of spatial and temporal overlap among operators.

Integration:

5. Prepare integrated plan for road access, facility siting or disturbances (e.g., vegetation clearing).
6. Conduct plan optimization exercise, which, for example, could include adjustments to well pad and access road locations and to the timing and location of harvest cutlbocks of overlapping timber operations.

Constraints Mapping:

7. Use constraints mapping process to help design a detailed integrated road access plan that avoids habitat features needed to sustain valued ecosystem components in the oil sands region.

Management Plan:

8. Prepare detailed integrated environment management plan to guide operations through all phases of development.
9. Include in the plan maps or models of shared road access, areas to avoid during construction and operation phases and seasonal limitations for construction and operation phases of the project.

Benefits

The benefits of ILM include both minimization of environmental effects and capital cost reductions. The ILM process is also adaptive; therefore, companies can learn from each other throughout their individual development phases and make adjustments accordingly to their plans. In addition to the capital cost reductions through sharing of roads, companies can also reduce costs through the coordination of reclamation plans.

Challenges

The greatest challenge of implementing ILM for industrial operators is meeting their resource access and timing needs without compromising the economic viability of their respective projects.

Selected Experience

ILM is gaining popularity in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region for its effectiveness as a mechanism to reduce the cumulative impacts resulting from numerous projects in the region. AXYS has experience providing environmental advice and guidance in conducting ILM in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region. For example, we have used ILM to assist ConocoPhillips Canada for its Surmont Oil Sands Project to coordinate its environmental footprint with AlPac.

The ILM goal of the Surmont Project was to minimize the environmental effects of its proposed project; thereby reducing its contribution to cumulative effects in a region already disturbed by energy and forestry-related activities. This goal was realized through design features (e.g., reduction in number of pads through use of directionally drilled wells), sharing of access and use of land already harvested by AlPac, and the application of constraints mapping. A key factor was the willingness of leaseholders in the oil sands region to share development plans.