Roadless Energy Production Sites

[Grzrd]

Both roads and energy production sites are often criticized for being environmentally destructive.  In Peru's Amazon rain forest, a natural gas processing plant is being praised for not having a road connection:
http://www.peruthisweek.com/news-1259-Perus-Camisea-gas-field-as-a-model-of-ecological-protection/

"In a recent issue of the environmental magazine Nature, former US Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt heralded the Camisea natural gas field as a model for moving forward with ecologically-friendly development in the Amazon.
That might surprise readers more accustomed to hearing environmentalists complain about the Camisea/Malvinas gas development, and especially the leaks from pipelines. For Babbitt, however, Camisea is notable for what is missing: roads.
The Malvinas plant, which processes natural gas from the Camisea field, in the jungles of Cusco, is the biggest gas or oil project in the Amazon without a road connection. Everything destined to or from Malvinas must come by airplane or through underground pipelines.
To see why that is important, one must look no farther than the neighboring Madre de Dios region. There, the recent construction of the Interoceanic Highway has opened up a huge swathe of the rainforest around Tambopata to development. As a result, illegal miners moved into the region and turned large parts of it into a moonscape, stripped of trees and all vegetation.
Babbitt seeks to avoid such things being repeated elsewhere in the rainforest. Partnering with the environmental group The Blue Moon Fund, Babbit has been speaking with industry and government executives, as well as NGOs in Peru. The goal is to draft legislation requiring any further projects in the Peruvian Amazon to stick to the Malvinas model.
According to Nature, however, even the leadership at Pluspetro, one of the owners of the Camisea project, say that road-free projects are not a solution for every development, citing the cost and difficulty of the project.
Backers of road-free projects point out that it protects uncontacted tribes in the Amazon and prevents social conflict with native communities."