Beneficial Use of Drilling Waste - A Wetland Restoration Technology

This project demonstrated that treated drill cuttings derived from oil and gas operations could be used as source material for rebuilding eroding wetlands in Louisiana. Planning to supply a restoration site, drill a source well, and provide part of the funding. Scientists from southeastern Louisiana University's (SLU) Wetland Biology Department were contracted to conduct the proposed field research and to perform mesocosm studies on the SLU campus. Plans were to use and abandoned open water drill slip as a restoration site. Dredged material was to be used to create berms to form an isolated cell that would then be filled with a blend of dredged material and drill cuttings. Three elevations were used to test the substrates ability to support various alternative types of marsh vegetation, i.e., submergent, emergent, and upland. The drill cuttings were not raw cuttings, but were treated by either a dewatering process (performed by Cameron, Inc.) or by a stabilization process to encapsulate undesirable constituents (performed by SWACO, Division of Smith International)