Oil sands producers have planted more than five million trees in a joint program designed to reclaim the boreal forest faster after exploration drilling.

It’s been just over a decade since ConocoPhillips Canada and its partners launched the Faster Forests program, along with researchers and regulators, and what they learned and achieved is now being used as a best practice across in situ oil sands projects and as an example for public land users in Alberta.

The vision of the Faster Forests program – to generate sites that are well on the way to recovering to a comparable forest within five years when it otherwise could take decades – has largely been achieved, says Robert Albricht, senior coordinator of environmental operations with ConocoPhillips Canada.

The company has led the Faster Forests collaboration since it was launched at its Surmont oil sands project south of Fort McMurray in 2009.

“I feel we accomplished what we set out to do over the last 10 years,” Albricht says. “Compared to a standard reclamation site, Faster Forests sites not only have taller trees and shrubs but will be further along the trajectory to a forest eco-site compatible with the surrounding forest.

“The vast majority of in situ oil sands sites in Alberta are now following Faster Forests guidelines, and [we] have created public resources to share this information.”

The program is helping inform broader reclamation and tree planting activities in the oil sands, which are large scale. Major producers planted more than 25 million trees between 2009 and 2018, according to BMO Capital Markets.

Changing the standard practice

The Faster Forests program, one of the current initiatives of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), was initially conceived because operators recognized that they could do better to restore disturbed boreal forest. It was a voluntary effort that is now recognized by the Government of Alberta in its Integrated Land Management Guidelines.

“In the early 2000s, there was growing recognition that the reclamation practices of the day on oil sands exploration sites was leading to the proliferation of grassy meadows that slowed the re-establishment of boreal forest plant communities,” Albricht says.

A longterm study by the University of Alberta published in 2008 found that “well sites drilled and abandoned on forested land in Alberta during the 1960s through much of the 1990s have generally been very slow to recover to natural forest.”

That research, Removing the Wellsite Footprint, provided the recommendations that gave birth to Faster Forests, Albricht says.

According to COSIA, “the Faster Forests program has led to wider adoption of planting sites soon after disturbance, improved reclamation practices and the planting of local native trees and shrubs to accelerate site recovery.”

Through Faster Forests practices, operators can also achieve formal reclamation certification faster and more predictably, Albricht says.

Learning from wildfires

The key principle of the Faster Forests program is to take lessons from how sites recover after a natural disturbance like a wildfire. After a wildfire, seedlings quickly re-establish, encouraging the return of forest cover shortly after, COSIA says.

For example, by minimizing actives like excavating and compressing soils, seeds, roots and natural features can be preserved, allowing for faster forest regrowth.

While the program has focused primarily on in situ sites south of Fort McMurray, Albricht says that some of the principles — like incorporating “rough and loose” coarse woody material instead of a more “neat and tidy” grassland approach — are easily transferred to reclamation projects in the mining region.

Work at the Surmont project is used by the Government of Alberta as an example of successful accelerated reclamation in its guidelines for integrated land management, which “aims to balance values, benefits, risks and trade-offs when planning and managing resource extraction, land use activities, and environmental conservation and management.”

It may be invisible to humans, but methane won’t be able to escape the high-tech eye of Claire, no matter where on Earth it’s being generated.

Montreal-based GHGSat Inc. joined world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January to announce it will be using the microwave-sized satellite to create a free map that will visualize global hotspots of methane. The greenhouse gas packs 25 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide.

Joining forces with the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites, as well as other orbiters that have similar monitoring technology, the company will formally launch its global methane emissions map at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland in November.

Methane accounts for about one-fifth of the warming the planet has experienced.

Stephane Germain, president and CEO of GHGSat, said while significant data is currently available for researchers to crunch methane emissions in many parts of the planet, this will be the first time it is presented visually, with a navigable map that will allow users to zoom in to a 2 km x 2 km grid anywhere on land. Higher resolution methane emission measurements, up to 25 m x 25 m, will be available to those who sign up under a paid subscription service.

“This is something that will raise awareness and questions about what can be done to mitigate these emissions,” Germain said.

“I think for the broader community there will be surprises. They might be surprised to see the amount of activity in the Permian Basin or in some parts of China, for example.

“And that may lead to questions about why, and what’s going on?”

Launched in 2016 on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, the 15-kilogram spacecraft travels at more than seven kilometres per second while circling the planet about 15 times a day in a polar orbit. Claire, also known as GHGSat-D, first took flight thanks to a collaboration between the company, Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and Suncor Energy Inc.

Dozens of clients have since signed on, keen to harness the valuable data generated by Claire.

The environmental value and potential to help combat climate change has already been demonstrated by the unwavering eye in the sky.

In early 2019, Claire unearthed a massive methane leak at the Korpezhe oil and gas field in Western Turkmenistan. After a series of flybys, it was determined that about 142,000 tonnes of methane had been released, prompting the company to work through diplomats to put an eventual cork in the GHG-billowing leak.

Later this year, Germain said he hopes to launch Claire’s cosmic sibling Iris, followed by Hugo sometime in 2021.

“We’re going full speed, pedal to the metal – we’re planning to launch 10 more satellites in the next two years,” he said, adding like the initial trio all will bear the names of children of members of the project’s team.

Down the road, Germain said he would also like to see the detection of CO2 added to network of satellites, noting the platform would allow for that as well.

“At the end of the day, CO2 is the largest volume (of GHGs), but there’s greater insight probably to be gained by measuring methane,” he said.

“If we can let people know that this capability exists today, it drives people to understand the global transparency that’s here now, and help people better understand our emissions.”