What the practice does

01Legacy wellbore integrity screening

Old wells inside a disposal permit area or an injection zone are the controlling risk more often than the injection well itself. Many predate digital records and have no reliable casing, cement, or total depth on file. The screening reconstructs what's known about each wellbore from state files, plugging reports, scout tickets, and production histories, ranks the population by the likelihood that a wellbore is an open conduit, and says plainly where the record runs out.

The questions this answers: which wells in the area could carry pressure or fluid out of the injection interval, which of them have records good enough to say either way, and which need a field program before anyone relies on them.

02Injection pressure and Area of Review

State rules fix the Area of Review at a radius, and pressure pays no attention to it. This work estimates how far and how fast pressure from a proposed or existing injection program propagates through the receiving formation, using radial flow calculations and published pressure diffusion research for the basin, and compares that footprint against the regulatory radius and against the legacy wellbores inside and outside it.

The questions this answers: whether a proposed disposal well can pressure up legacy wellbores beyond the statutory Area of Review, how the answer changes with rate, cumulative volume, and permit life, and what the regulator's radius leaves unexamined.

03Induced seismicity assessment

Seismic catalogs are compiled for the area around a site from the state and national networks, screened against the operative state mitigation protocol, and read alongside injection volumes, mapped structure, and the published record of fault slip potential in the basin. Where surface deformation data exist, the InSAR literature is brought in.

The questions this answers: whether the seismicity near a site is consistent with injection, whether it crosses the thresholds a regulator would act on, and what the structural setting implies for a permit that attests to no faults.

04Disposal permit application review

Class II disposal applications carry operator representations about faulting, confining layers, and separation from underground sources of drinking water, and in some states those representations are self-attested. This work tests them against regional geology, published structure, and the aquifer record, and sets the application beside the regime in a comparable state so the differences in what each one requires are visible.

The questions this answers: whether the application's geology holds up, what it leaves out, and what a protestant or a regulator would need to ask for.

05Rate transient and pressure record review

When a reservoir model is offered in a proceeding, the first question is whether it reproduces from its own inputs. This work rebuilds the pressure record end to end, from gauge readings through the conversion chain to the pressures the model was fed, and reads the native model files to recover what data they actually hold, when it was loaded, and how the saved versions differ from one another. Material balance and pore volume estimates are replicated from produced data with every assumption declared.

The questions this answers: whether an observed pressure is a measurement or a calculation, whether the model's conclusions survive its own sensitivity cases, and whether the reservoir it describes is the one the production data describe.

06Statistical testing of cause and effect

A claim that production changed because of something a neighbor did is a statistical claim, and it can be tested as one. The methods are standard and are named in the deliverable: regression with autocorrelation-robust errors, moving-block bootstrap, placebo-date testing, changepoint detection, and interrupted time series with controls. Estimators are verified against closed-form results and constants are declared so a reviewer can rerun the analysis.

The questions this answers: whether a change in water cut or production rate lines up with its alleged cause, how often a change that size appears on ordinary dates, and whether the timing supports the story being told about it.

07Financial assurance and bonding gap analysis

Bonding requirements are compared against documented plugging costs for the well population in question, by state, by well depth and vintage, and by operator size, using the public cost studies and the state program records. The history of the framework is part of the analysis, since the gap is usually a design decision made decades ago rather than a recent failure.

The questions this answers: what a bond actually covers against the liability it's meant to secure, where in the framework the shortfall was built in, and how the numbers compare across jurisdictions.

08Technical memoranda and auditable analysis

Every engagement ends in a written record: a technical memorandum for counsel, a regulator, or a landowner, written in plain language, with the technical detail in appendices and the calculations left live. Replications are delivered as native spreadsheets with coefficients derived in the sheet rather than pasted in, so the other side can check the arithmetic without asking for the code.

The deliverable types: technical risk assessments, rebuttal memoranda, plain-language explainers for non-technical readers, replication workbooks, and source registers that tie every figure to a document.

How the work is delivered

The work starts with the question and the records. A first conversation establishes what's being asked, what's available, and whether a geophysicist is the right person to answer it; conflicts are checked before anything substantive is discussed. From there the scope is written down, with hours estimated by task, and the deliverable is defined before the analysis begins. Assumptions are tracked from the first day and carried into the final document, so the record of what was assumed is as complete as the record of what was found.

Role

Consulting expert support to counsel is available on matters involving legacy wells, produced water disposal, pore space, and induced seismicity. The practice also works directly for landowners, pore space owners, regulators, and consulting firms that need an independent read on a subsurface question. The analysis is the same whichever side asks for it.

This page describes capability. It doesn't describe any engagement, and nothing on it should be read as saying that one exists.