Mitigating the environmental impacts on wetland ecosystems of oil and gas exploration, production, and transportation is a critical issue in the development of national oil and gas resources. One option for impact mitigation under well-defined circumstances is wetland banking. With this process, credits are provided or wetland acreage is created, enhanced, restored, or set aside to compensate for those areas affected by development operations. Numerous agencies at the state and federal level are investigating the banking option from the perspective of the sponsoring agency. Industrial and private entrepreneurs are also investigating banking as a cost-effective way of meeting their mitigation responsibilities. In this report, the concept of wetland mitigation banking and its implications for the oil and gas industry are evaluated by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).
This wetland mitigation banking project was sponsored by the Gas Research Institute (GRI), the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America Foundation (INGAAF), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). All four organizations sponsor and administer research programs related to oil and gas resource development.
