Post-Petroleum Landscape

Horizontal drilling is a technique used to develop larger oil and gas resources from a single well. Fewer wells are drilled overall and the environmental impact is thus reduced. As this drilling technique matures, and the demand for oil is reduced, the pump jack and its platform are likely to be abandoned.

In Logansport, Louisiana, a small town heavily dependent on oil drilling, has more than 200 pump jacks. Each pump jack has a concrete platform to provide a flat surface on which it operates. These concrete pads affect infiltration and the micro-climate of such sites. Since they are abandoned, the idea of the project is to reclaim them by digging ditches on the pads and planting vegetation in them to let the roots themselves crack the pads.

It would become a control variables experiment to identify the best dig method and plant selection for each site in the different environments. Hence each site would generate its own unique ecology. However, the concrete pads and method of intervention will be common framework and language. Therefore, similar technique can be applied to a similar context outside Logansport, all through the country.