Assessing OSE Well Site Reclamation Success Using the Peatland criteria

When this project took place, reclaiming and restoring boreal peatlands disturbed by oil and gas activities was a relatively new territory for environmental planners, practitioners, and researchers. The Reclamation Criteria for Wellsites and Associated Facilities for Peatlands released in October 2015 dictated that restoring disturbed peatlands should aim to restore key ecological functions and services of disturbed peatlands. In this study, two oil sands exploration (OSE) wells at Imperial Oil’s Cold Lake in-situ facility were assessed using this new criteria with the goal of evaluating the vegetation establishment and overall site conditions against the criteria requirements and helping industry understand the relationship between OSE construction/operation practices and site recovery towards certification. They selected two OSE wells built in a bog and a fen and followed procedures outlined in the criteria.

The bog site struggled with varying microsites which fell outside of peat forming conditions and presence of undesirable species due to dry conditions. The fen site struggled to meet woody stem requirement and suffered from high cattail cover in a wet area. The fen site passed assessment while the bog site failed, even though both scored 17/20 points, due to a pattern of a single parameter failing on multiple grids at the bog site. Overall, large areas of dry upland features are more challenging to address than areas that are too wet. Dry habitat and presence of mineral substrates provides fertile grounds for weedy, non-peatland species to establish. Management of weedy upland species in a wetland is tricky. Keeping a site wet is a filter to keep many weedy/non-wetland species out; the challenge is to keep cattail from taking over and provide microsites for trees to grow. This can be addressed by mounding or adding logs.