The landscape infrastructure footprint of oil development: Venezuela's heavy oil belt

Oil exploration and production activities (CEPA) and other extractive endeavors can create large-scale and permanent landscape alterations through the establishment of infrastructure features such as roads. well pads, pipelines and production facilities. These structures can lead to or increase landscape fragmentation and degradation, reduce biodiversity, disrupt important ecosystem services and attract informal settlements that further alter the landscape, deplete area resources and lead to social conflict. Aside from regulatory standards, many energy (oil and gas) companies include voluntary environmental performance as part of their sustainability reporting. However, they do not account for these site-specific alterations in a systematic, quantifiable and transparent way. This paper proposes a calculation of a modified Landscape Infrastructure Footprint (LIF) of OEPA based on landscape ecology metrics measured via GIS and remote sensing techniques. Three Venezuelan heavy oil belt (HOB) operations were examined with reference to the years 1990 and 2000. Results indicate that Ameriven displayed the smallest LIF. Newer technologies, best practices, land cover, competing economic interests and type of management may explain observed alterations. LIF methods provide four important benefits. First, they can help to reduce surface disturbances by informing planning practices in current as well as in new projects. Second, they fortify environmental reporting by providing objective measures of environmental performance tied to extractive activities. Third, by including LIF in their sustainability practices, extractive industries can improve their competitive advantage. Finally, the LIF helps create a set of transparent environmental performance standards that industry and regulators can adopt in order to measure and monitor landscape alterations resulting from extractive activities. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.