********************* (Packet can also be downloaded and printed-Just click "2009-2010 DR" at the botton of page under "attachments") *******************************
Access to Well Sites: The Disappearing Road Competition
Summary
The disappearing road competition is part of the Environmentally Friendly Drilling Program (http://www.gpri.org/EvironDrilling/EDindex.htm) with the objective to develop innovative concepts for reducing the footprint of transporting equipment and materials to drill sites in environmentally sensitive areas. The “Disappearing Road” concept is not limited to a physical road and it encompasses any transportation method that can be used to move the equipment and materials to the drill site with the least disturbance to the environment.
The contest is open to all University Departments with interests in the utilization of natural resources in a sustainable manner. It is also our hope that professors and department heads will be able to utilize our program in their curriculum. This year, the competition will be designed for either a coastal margin or desert ecosystem and will be conducted during the 2009 – 2010 academic year.
(See “Contest Management” for information about Phase I, II, and III)
Table 1: Prizes for the competition winners.
Objectives The goal of the “The Disappearing Road” student competition is to foster interest and dialogue in the education community regarding the important environmental considerations in the design of transportation systems for the oil and gas industry. The objective is to develop innovative concepts for reducing the footprint of transporting equipment and materials to drill sites in environmentally sensitive areas. The “Disappearing Road” concept is not limited to a physical road and it encompasses any transportation method that can be used to move the equipment and materials to the drill site with the least disturbance to the environment. It is emphasized that this competition is not aimed at encouraging increased activity in environmentally protected areas, rather it has been launched at a time when these areas already experiencing greater oil and gas activity.
This competition will have significant impacts on both education and oil and gas industry through: · Forming multi-disciplinary teams of students with engineering and environmental backgrounds to work on a problem that has significant science, engineering, environmental, and economical impacts on the society. · Creating an educational took to teach young engineers and scientists how to incorporate sound environmental practices into projects. · Instilling in students the need to develop systems based not only on technical constraints but also under strict environmental conditions. · Initiating dialogue between students and experts from the oil and gas industry. · Motivating students to develop innovative design concepts in which they integrate engineering design principles, engineering calculations, environmental policies, science and objective procedures for measuring short and long term impact of projects on the environment. · Increasing awareness of the short and long term effects of roads and logistics of equipment on environmentally sensitive areas. · Developing new practices for low impact oil and gas operations in environmentally sensitive areas.
Contest Identification The Disappearing Roads competition for 2009-2010 school year will be designed for either/or a desert ecosystems or a coastal margin ecosystem. The competition entrants should demonstrate that their design adheres to the environmental guidelines given in Appendix B.
The Disappearing Road should be used for a year to transport materials, equipment and personnel on and off drill site. The transportation route is estimated to be five miles in length. Teams are encouraged to evaluate whether a physical road is really necessary, or if other forms of transport could be considered. The route is also expected to carry 150 18-wheel truck loads (a truck load = 80,000 lbs) within a period of 6 weeks.
Evaluation Plan: Each team must consist of at least three students and a faculty advisor. While not required, the team members should have multidisciplinary backgrounds that encompass engineering/science and environmental studies. Extra credit will be given to multidisciplinary proposals. The competition will be managed jointly by the Houston Advanced Research Center, Texas A&M Department of Civil Engineering and the Department of Petroleum Engineering. Representatives from academia, oil and gas industry, government agencies and environmental organizations will serve on the judging panel.
The competition will be carried out in three phases.
Phase I (Due by October 9, 2009) Teams are required to send a qualification statement to the competition management team. (There is an example on the website). This statement should not exceed four single-spaced pages and include:
(1) Names of the team members and faculty advisor. (2) Area of specialties or majors of the team members. (3) Description of the design concept and its relationship to the guidelines given in Appendix B. (4) A letter signed by the faculty advisor indicating interest in participating in the competition.
Seven teams will then be selected to move onto Phase II. If their proposal is accepted for Phase II, A&M will reward an expense reimbursement of $2,000 to the team to help defer the expense of preparing their design concept for the final competition. Teams may elect to secure additional funding from their own sources.
The information should be sent to: Cheryl Monk Petroleum Engineering Department 710 Richardson Bldg. TAMU-3116 College Station, TX 77843-3116 Phone: (979) 845-2272 Fax: (979) 862-7407 Email: cheryl.monk@pe.tamu.edu
Phase II (Due by February 19, 2010) This is the phase in which teams will develop their design concept. At the end of this phase, each team will submit a report discussing the following issues and points will be awarded as indicated:
1) The engineering design concept of the Disappearing Road. The design should meet the environmental requirements given in Appendix B. • Up to 30 points for the validity of the concept and its ability to meet the engineering guidelines. 2) The environmental guidelines and measures that will be used reduce the impact of the Disappearing Road on the environmental both in short term and long term. • Up to 20 points for the validity and objectivity of the proposed measures and guidelines. 3) The assessment of how the environment will be restored after the use of the Disappearing Road is over. Assessment should be presented after a one-year period and after a five year period. • Up to 20 points for the validity and objectivity of the proposed assessment technique concerning the “Disappearing” nature of the road. 4) Engineering evaluation of the design and demonstration of its ability to function within the design period. • Up to 15 points for validity of the engineering design.
In addition to the points discussed above, Up to 15 points will be assigned for report organization and team make-up. The report should not exceed 15 single space pages with a font size equal to at least 10 points. It is recommended that the report includes illustrations or pictures that can support the concept of the Disappearing Road. Each of the reports will be reviewed by three reviewers that represent academia, industry and environmental interests.
At the end of Phase II, the judging team will select five winning teams that will qualify to proceed to Phase III. Each team that is selected to continue onto Phase III will be awarded $2,000 to assist with expenses associated with the Phase III effort that includes preparing the presentation and travel to the greater Houston area. Teams may elect to secure additional funding from their own sources.
Phase III (will be presented at A&M on May 15, 2009) The three winning teams from Phase II will be invited to visit the greater Houston area in order to make a presentation about “Disappearing Road” Design concept. The presentation should include all the items listed in Phase II. Teams can choose to include virtual deign of the road in order to illustrate the functionality of the Disappearing Road. A panel of judges will evaluate each of the presentations based on the items and point system listed in Phase II.
Sponsors The sponsors of this competition are the Global Petroleum Research Institute (GPRI) sponsors and Texas A&M University. Halliburton has provided the funding for the awards to winners.
Prizes and Awards The finals of the competition will be held within the greater Houston area as a festival. Each of the winning teams from Phase II will receive monetary stipends of $2,000 to prepare the presentation and travel to Texas A&M University. Teams may elect to secure additional funding from their own sources.
The points from Phase II (report) and Phase III (presentation) will be averaged to determine the final score. The prizes will be given according to the criterion in Table 1. Table 1: Prizes for the competition winners.
In addition, the winner of the disappearing roads competition will be assisted in the creation of an industry/government Joint Venture to fund a prototype disappearing road at the Texas A&M Pecos Research & Testing Center (http://tamusystem.tamu.edu/systemwide/05/12/briefs/tti.html) located in West Texas. There the disappearing road will be compared to commercially available means of transport road surfaces over sensitive terrain in a desert ecosystem. The outcome of a successful JV prototype test would be available by GPRI for commercialization, with members of the project to share in benefits from that effort.
Competition Director David Burnett Director of Technology Global Petroleum Research Institute Harold Vance Dept. of Petroleum Engineering Texas A&M University 3116 TAMU College Station, Texas 77843-3116 979-845-2274 burnett@pe.tamu.edu
References Behavioral Learning Theory: Its Relevance to Marketing and Promotions Michael L. Rothschild, William C. Gaidis, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Spring, 1981) , pp. 70- 78
Gregson, P. H. and Little, Designing Contests for Teaching Electrical Engineering Design, Int. J. Eng Ed. Vol. 14, No. 5, pp. 367±374, 1998
Kadaster, Ali G., Millheim, Keith G. Onshore Mobile Platform: A Modular Platform for Drilling and Production Operations in Remote and Environmentally Sensitive Areas,” IADC/SPE 87140IADC/SPE Drilling Conference, Dallas, Texas, U.S.A., 2–4 March 2004.
Watson, R. L., Federal Lands Access Inventories Conducted Under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) Amendments of 2000 94278-MS, SPE/EPA/DOE Exploration and Production Environmental Conference, 7-9 March, Galveston, Texas
Walder, Bethanie, and Bagley, Scott An Explanation and Assessment of Road Removal in Varied Habitats,” Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads, Missoula, MT 1998.
Burnett, D. B. and Williams, T. E. “Field Testing of Environmentally Friendly Drilling Fluids” US DOE Research Project, 2006.
Appendix A Competition Motivation Environmental issues are a significant component of every energy industry endeavor. In gas and oil drilling sites, conventional roads may go through a few to over a hundred acres depending on the drilling site. It is realized that conventional construction of roads imposes risk to the protection of environmentally sensitive areas and especially the U.S. National Park Lands. This risk is realized in the following points: • Disturb natural watersheds. • Remove vegetation coverage. • Change the topography and soil structure • Remove natural habitat for wildlife. • Provide a barrier to movement and spread of plants and animals. • Affect animal behavior. • Provide further access to sensitive areas off the main highway. • Pose a visual disturbance to the landscape.
Typically, after drilling operations have been completed or suspended, the roads are frequently ‘remediated’. This removal is intended to allow both the recovery of the lands to a pre-use condition and minimize additional access. Topographical recovery is relatively easy. Initial vegetation begins to grow back, but the adverse long term effects of construction on the social use of the land, the habitat disturbance and on the stability of the lands themselves have not yet been fully defined. Currently, there are no well defined objective engineering or environmental measures of the real impacts of roads or the time frame for the environment to recover (e.g. plant diversity to be re-established, soils to return to their original structures). For example, a recent fire that occurred in the Padre Islands Park exposed a path of a former access route used last in the 1990’s. This particular route had supposedly been ‘reintegrated’ back to its pre-use condition, at least topographically. The fire made it clear that the road path never recovered to its ‘pre-use’ condition. The Disappearing Road challenge extends beyond its utility for oil and gas access roads. The concept is of interest to a number of U.S. agencies such as the Department of Energy and Department of the Interior, for sustainable development of other natural resources in a manner that protects the environment beyond what restrictions and regulatory barriers can provide.
Appendix B
Desert Ecosystem Description
Approximately one-third of the Earth's land surface is desert, arid land with meager rainfall that supports only sparse vegetation and a limited population of people and animals. Deserts--stark, sometimes mysterious worlds--have been portrayed as fascinating environments of adventure and exploration from narratives such as that of Lawrence of Arabia to movies such as "Dune." These arid regions are called deserts because they are dry. They may be hot, they may be cold. They may be regions of sand or vast areas of rocks and gravel peppered with occasional plants. But deserts are always dry.
Deserts are natural laboratories in which to study the interactions of wind and sometimes water on the arid surfaces of planets. They contain valuable mineral deposits that were formed in the arid environment or that were exposed by erosion. Because deserts are dry, they are ideal places for human artifacts and fossils to be preserved. Deserts are also fragile environments.
The misuse of these lands is a serious and growing problem in parts
of our world.”
These comments are excerpted from the USGS Desert Book http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/contents/
In many places in the Western U.S. O&G operations are changing the desert ecosystem. It is incumbent on our industry to minimize the impact if drilling and production activities in the fragile areas.
The Chihuahuan Desert Province was selected as representative of a desert ecosystem.
The following description is taken from the USDA Forest Service web site (#321):
http://www.fs.fed.us/colorimagemap/images/
Teams may wish to further research other descriptions of the eco-region.
Chihuahuan Desert Province
Southeastern Arizona, southern New Mexico, western Texas, 85,200 mi2 (220,700 km2)
Land-surface form.--This province is mostly desert. Practically the only permanent streams are a few large rivers that originate in humid provinces. The Rio Grande and the Pecos Rivers and a few of their larger tributaries are the only perennial streams. The area has undulating plains with elevations near 4,000 ft (1,200 m), from which somewhat isolated mountains rise 2,000 to 5,000 ft (600 to 1,500 m). Washes, dry most of the year, fill with water following rains. Basins with no outlets drain into shallow playa lakes that dry up during rainless periods. Small whirlwinds constantly play over these dry playas when they are heated by summer sun. Extensive dunes of silica sand cover parts of the province. In a few places there are dunes of gypsum sand, the most notable being the White Sands near Alamogordo in southern New Mexico. In scattered areas, small beds and isolated buttes of blackish lava occur.
Climate.--Summers are long and hot. Winters are short, but may include brief periods when temperatures fall below freezing. Average annual temperatures range from 50 to 65°F (10 to 18°C). The climate is distinctly arid; spring and early summer are extremely dry. Mean annual precipitation at El Paso, Texas, is 8.65 in (221 mm). In July, summer rains usually begin, torrential storms that are mostly local and continue through October. The northern part of the province also receives winter rains, which are more gentle and widespread.
Vegetation.--A number of shrubs, most of them thorny, are typical of the Chihuahuan Desert. They frequently grow in open stands, but sometimes form low, closed thickets. In many places, they are associated with short grass, such as grama. Extensive arid grasslands cover most of the high plains of the province. On deep soils, honey mesquite is often the dominant plant. Cacti are also abundant, particularly prickly pears, but they are smaller in size and fewer in number of species than in the Sonoran Desert. The desert is characterized by yuccas, so much so that one has been adopted as the state flower of New Mexico. A few cottonwoods and other trees grow beside the widely separated rivers. Creosote bush, which covers great areas in characteristic open stands, is especially common on gravel fans. Though creosote bush is the most abundant plant cover of the province, other species like lechuguilla are also abundant. Another distinctive plant is candelilla, or wax plant. On rocky slopes, the ocotillo is conspicuous. Juniper and pinyons, limited to rocky outcrops, are prominent around the Stockton Plateau in western Texas. Some isolated mountains in the Chihuahuan Province rise high enough to carry a belt of oak and juniper woodland. On a few of the highest mountains, there are pines among the oaks, in some places forming nearly pure stands. Douglas-fir and white fir occupy a few sheltered upper slopes in the Santa Catalina Mountains.
Soils.--In the western and northern portions of this province, the soils are primarily Aridisols. Both Aridisols and Entisols are present in the south.
Fauna.--Pronghorn antelope and mule deer are the most widely distributed large game animals. Whitetail deer inhabit parts of Texas. The collared peccary or javelina is common in the southern part of the region. The blacktail jackrabbit, desert cottontail, kangaroo rat, wood rat, and numerous smaller rodents compete with domestic and wild herbivores for available forage. Mammalian predators include the coyote and bobcat. The black-throated sparrow is one of the most abundant birds of the province. Greater roadrunner, curve-billed thrasher, and Chihuahuan raven are also common. Scaled quail and Gambel's quail occupy most of the area, and bobwhite populations reach into its eastern portion. Raptors include the golden eagle, great horned owl, red-tailed hawk, ferruginous hawk, and the rare zone-tailed hawk. The many reptiles include the common chuckwalla, Texas horned lizard, desert spiny lizard, and various species of rattlesnakes.
The Pecos Desert Research and Testing Center. The 5,800-acre center features nine distinct test tracks, a full range of support facilities and available acreage for projects requiring either open land or custom facilities. During its 45-year history, this facility has served as home to key research by automakers from around the world, as well as serving for decades as the primary testing facility for the B.F. Goodrich Company.
There are also numerous buildings on the site, including a 30-bay garage and administrative offices with storage areas. Considerable undeveloped land on the site can accommodate the development of additional custom facilities to support specialized research. Coastal Margin Description A barrier island code named “GI Land” located along the U.S. Gulf Coast in an oil and gas producing province. ‘
The island is roughly 2 miles from the mainland separated by a lagoon Barrier islands are long, narrow, offshore deposits of sand or sediments that parallel the coast line. Some barrier islands can extend for 100 miles (160 km) or more. The islands are separated from the main land by a shallow sound, bay or lagoon. Barrier islands are often found in chains along the coast line and are separated from each other by narrow tidal inlets, such as the Outer Banks of NC. The formation of barrier islands is complex and not completely understood. The current theory is that barrier islands were formed about 18,000 years ago when the last Ice Age ended. As the glaciers melted and receded, the sea levels began to rise, and flooded areas behind the beach ridges at that time. The rising waters carried sediments from those beach ridges and deposited them along shallow areas just off the new coast lines. Waves and currents continued to bring in sediments that built up, forming the barrier islands. In addition, rivers washed sediments from the mainland that settled behind the islands and helped build them up.
Salt marsh - a low-lying area on the sound-side of a barrier island. Salt marshes are generally divided into high and low marsh areas. High marsh areas get flooded twice each month with the spring tides, while low marsh areas get flooded twice daily with the high tides. Cord grasses stabilize the salt marsh area, which are one of the most ecologically productive areas (amount of vegetation per acre) on Earth. Barrier islands serve two main functions. First, they protect the coastlines from severe storm damage. Second, they harbor several habitats that are refuges for wildlife. In fact , the salt marsh ecosystems of the islands and the coast help to purify runoffs from mainland streams and rivers. Each of these habitats has distinct animal and plant life, which we will discuss in the next section.
Beach Habitat On the ocean side is the barrier island's beach habitat. The beach is much like a desert in that it lacks fresh water, but a large portion of the beach gets covered almost entirely with salt water twice daily (the entire beach gets covered to the dune base during storms). Animals and plants in this environment (known as the intertidal zone, between tides) must endure long periods of exposure to salt water and drying air. On the beach, the only plant life you'll see is some algae that get washed ashore. Bacteria live in the spaces between the sand grains where water from the surf percolates through. The animals on the beach itself include burrowing animals like mole crabs and clams that filter-feed during high tides, burrowing worms that feed on bacteria in the sand, scavenging crabs (ghost crabs) and various shorebirds (sandpipers, seagulls and pelicans) that eat the crabs, burrowing animals and offshore fish. http://science.howstuffworks.com/barrier-island2.htm
Dune Habitat The dunes receive moisture from rain and surf and are occasionally flooded during severe storms. The dunes are still a relatively hostile environment with high salt content, sandy soil and little fresh water. Plants such as sea oats and bitter pancum provide stability to the dunes. Their root systems hold the sand in place and their shoots slow the winds, thereby allowing sand to be deposited. Along the dunes, you will find many crabs, particularly ghost crabs. Again, you will find birds (gulls, terns) that feed on the animals that inhabit the dunes.
Barrier-flats Habitat On other islands, the barrier flats come after the dunes. The primary vegetation includes cordgrass and sawgrass. These areas are often flooded daily during high tides. The muds and sediments are full of anaerobic bacteria (there is little oxygen in the sediments). The bacteria decompose the rich organic material in the sediments and from dead plants and animals. Animals that live in the wet muds filter-feed bacteria and plankton from the tidewaters or feed on bacteria in the muds; these animals include clams, mussels, snails and worms. Various fish come and go with the tides. Fiddler crabs feed on the bacteria in the muds. Ghost crabs and blue crabs feed on the bacteria, small invertebrates and small fish. Various birds (seagulls, egrets, pelicans) feed on the fish, crabs and invertebrates. Images of island
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