DEMONSTRATION STUDY: Approaching oil and gas pad reclamation with data management: A framework for the future

A database framework was constructed with the purpose of creating a restoration decision management tool by compiling oil and gas pad reclamation data to identify successful restoration practices. Pre-existing data were secured from public and private databases from two Wyoming production fields in the Greater Green River Basin: Jonah Infill and Moxa Arch. The framework includes tables for measurements of reclamation practices (e.g., soil handling methods and amendments, seeding mix and timing, and weed management), geographical and climate data (e.g., precipitation, slope, aspect, elevation, and temperature) and monitoring data (e.g., vegetation composition and structure along with soil analysis and grazing). Microsoft Access and ESRI ArcGIS were employed to build the reclamation database for consistent and reliable data storage, manipulation, and retrieval. Short-term goals of the project were to quantify disturbance and reclamation efforts and to evaluate the reclamation status of individual well pads. Long-term goals of the project are to deliver: (1) an operational framework to analyze and isolate trends leading to reclamation success and failure, (2) a strong decision management tool for limiting uncertainty and estimating associated risk under variable environmental conditions, (3) to evaluate regulatory standards for reclamation, and (4) to offer a flexible and sharable database that allows for additional data input from diverse sources. Database performance was found to be dependent on data consistency and validity. Querying populated data along with uniting imported data has revealed multiple strengths and weaknesses with the database framework. Additional