Land
We continually consider the amount of land we use, including the protection of livestock and wildlife and their critical habitats, to ensure we make responsible and sustainable decisions that reduce our impact as much as possible. Before we break ground on any new project we have a plan in place for how to return the land back to its previous state.
REDUCING OUR IMPACT
- We use horizontal drilling with multiple wells on each pad to access more gas with less footprint and land disturbance.
- From the start of our planning process, we design our operations and associated infrastructure to both maximize efficiency and keep habitat disturbance to a minimum.
- Planning activities to avoid wildlife migratory seasons, conducting wildlife assessments, creating wildlife crossings, managing dust control and using strict speed limits on local roads all help to reduce our impact on wildlife and livestock.
- We started interim reclamation in 2014 which is now considered best practice and goes beyond regulatory requirements.
- We have completed interim reclamation on over 45 sites since 2015.
- Once a pad stops producing, interim reclamation is replaced with final reclamation which includes safely capping the well, removing all the surface infrastructure and recontouring the land back to its original state. In the Groundbirch field, this could be either pasture land or natural landscape.
- Archeological assessments are conducted to avoid unintentionally impacting culturally and historically important areas.
- Throughout all our operations, we collaborate with local landowners and organizations, Indigenous communities and third-party environmental consultants. We also work with the provincial regulator to ensure their standards are met or exceeded, and we seek final reclamation certification for each site once our activities are complete.
IMPROVING PROCESSES
- During both interim and final reclamation, we use salvaged soil from the original landscape to re-form the land and we re-introduce original vegetation to promote natural biodiversity.
- Our partnership with the Twin Sisters Native Plant Nursery, a local Indigenous-owned business, allows us to reclaim natural landscapes using both local traditional knowledge and native plant species while helping to employ community members.
- We collaborate with the Peace River Forage Association in using our leased land to experiment with, and improve, different seed mixes for reclamation.
