Posted by Joe Lorenzino on Thursday, January 15, 2004 at 0:09AM :
In Reply to: Re: Cold? Its all relative posted by Willy-N on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 at 10:01PM :
Here where I live in southwestern Saskatchewan, the environmental people have come up with a great "new" use for ice roads: we are building them over "environmentally sensitive areas" to allow for natural gas exploration. Instead of drilling in the summer, the oil companies have found that most of the "surface impact" issues go away by drilling in the winter. Now instead of grading a road out to a new well site in the summer, they freeze their way in on an ice road during the winter. The only impact is from the first couple of tankers that start the road building process. Once the road and lease site are built up with thick enough ice, all of the drilling equipment can be brought in and out with virtually no surface "impact". As an added bonus, when the ice melts, it provides much needed moisture to the immediate area, so the native plants tend to grow better helping to fill in any "impact" that may have occurred. Most of the areas they are using this process in have been designated as "sensitive" because they are part of The Great Sand Hills, and are very unstable (prone to major wind erosion) if the native vegetation is disturbed. We have been setting up a few tanker trucks with pumps and spray bars just for building these temporary "ice access roads". We have also been building portable containment tanks to replace the “mud pits” that used to be constructed at the drilling site. This is again for “low impact” environmental reasons.
The tankers are loaded at a nearby river, and yes, there has been one or two “break through” after being loaded. J.V.L.
Oh Yeah, your cold weather didn't come from here as it is still +4C ( 38F) out right now at 11 pm (the one drawback to the ice road concept here in Chinook Country: it can still melt in the middle of winter )