Abstract: Environmental Impact in Jungle Areas

Wye, Robin; Cristian H. Malaver, Juan F. Rodriguez - GAPS Ltd

In the last two decades, the exploration industry has been encouraged, as well as the local governments, to reach high levels of production, with minimal environmental impact over working areas. In the Latin American industry, a well-known document called Environment Impact Study (EIS), which includes an Environmental Management Plan (EMP), states the main rules to follow over all the project exploration phases, avoiding and mitigating several impacts generated locally.

For seismic crews in jungle areas, there are 3 particular topics, in which their proper control system is mandatory for our operations: Social Impact (Inhabitants and Indigene Communities interactivity), Vegetation Impact (Working on Reservation Areas) and Animal Impact (Bio-diversity control).

Explaining GAPS particular cases, in the Peruvian northern forest we assisted a 3-D seismic crew, where the Corrientes River flows across the project area. In this program, we were to construct at least 50 helipads and another 50 drop-zones for logistic purposes. Due to the fact that the EMP recommended just 40 helipads, we selected 6 zones utilized previously for helipad construction, and 32 Primary Forest zones as well, in which the deforestation was minimal, around an ecosystem comprised of a local palm tree known as Aguaje. Approximately 0.06% of the project zone was deforested. Our Safety and Environmental Advisors were closely supervising this job, obtaining good results in helipads and drop zones. Furthermore, a detailed forest inventory was undertaken to control cut-off species. From the former inventories, we calculated statistically the deforested areas and species, broadly fulfilling the EMP requirements. Therefore, it was necessary to build a plant house, sowing seeds and local native plants during the last 3 months of this project.

In other GAPS projects, the forest areas have restricted the control of plants. Nevertheless, we used to re-forest using local trees for planting, acquired through industrial plant houses. Moreover, we have considered that the GAPS HSE Department, which has been closely involved with every seismic crew, has a better understanding of the local impact generated. For this reason, we help in the reforestation and demobilization plan from the beginning of the project. For the example shown above, the plant house had 2 objectives: Take local species that have grown up properly, sow them across the helipads closer to the Base Camp, and evaluate their behavior due to stress provoked by some transplantations. This allowed us to take some branches from the sowed helipads and re-sow them immediately, mostly aided by a local botanic expert. The personnel in charge of the reforestation plan walked down the area in several crews, carrying out other tasks such as: camps recovery, sanitary fill-in pits closure, septic wells closure, waste classification for final disposal, shot-points and counter-holes closures, staking and picking-up cable.

Based on the clear and operative structure in HSE (Health, Safety and Environment management), joined with the invaluable collaboration of local inhabitants at each work area, has allowed us to achieve the development of exploration projects with a minimal environmental impact.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90933©1998 ABGP/AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil