Abstract

This earth is not the heritage from our ancestors; it is borrowed from our children.

VICO Indonesia operates Indonesia's Sanga-Sanga oil and gas block in onshore East Kalimantan. To maintain its legacy as a green company, VICO is committed to rehabilitate its footprint due to past operations and eliminate all hazards to community, environmental and company assets. Soils pose a special challenge to rehabilitation in this area, requiring "external intervention" to provide ideal conditions for self-recovery of micro ecosystems.

In 1999, the Site Rehabilitation Department was formed to consolidate and strengthen company efforts to rehabilitate footprints of past operations. A bioengineering approach proved effective, combining civil engineering structures with re-vegetation to stop slope erosion and stabilize surface conditions. This method has shown to be more cost effective than the use of either vegetation or structures alone. It blends into the landscape and emphasizes the use of natural, locally available materials.

Several of the site rehabilitation projects are in the hilly areas of the Mutiara Asset. A decision to split the work was made after a joint site survey by the Mutiara Asset and the Site Rehabilitation Department (SRD). While the SRD conducts complex civil work, the Asset team performs revegetation of bare flat land. By splitting the work and applying cost effective but labor-intensive methods, the Mutiara Asset achieved goals for its site rehabilitation projects with a 40% reduction in cost.