What caused the event?
Technical causation analysis for drilling, well-control, loss and influx events — with alternative causes tested against the record rather than assumed away.
Disputes & technical expert services
What the operational record can — and cannot — prove.
Independent upstream engineering for counsel, expert teams and parties to drilling and well-operations disputes: what happened, why, and what was reasonably knowable at the time.
Who it is for
The engineering inside a dispute, for the people who have to argue it.
Drilling disputes turn on technical facts that are rarely obvious from the paperwork: whether an influx was detectable, whether a loss was induced or inevitable, whether a pressure-management system did what its design said it would. The record that settles those questions exists — daily reports, real-time data, pressure records — but it is written in a language few legal teams read fluently.
Support is offered to counsel, to testifying experts and expert-services firms who need an upstream drilling specialist alongside quantum, delay or forensic work, and to operators, contractors and service companies who want an independent technical view before a disagreement becomes a dispute.
Basis of experience
The experience behind this service is 23+ years of upstream drilling and well operations, set out on the Experience and Expertise pages. It is engineering experience. It is not a record of prior expert-witness or arbitral appointments, and is not presented as one.
The questions
Six questions a drilling dispute usually turns on.
What actually happened, and in what order?
Operational timelines rebuilt from daily drilling reports, EDR and PWD data, mud logs, pressure records, BHA records, incident reports and engineering models.
Was the decision defensible when it was made?
Judged on what was reasonably knowable at the time, against accepted industry practice — not on what hindsight and the full data set make obvious afterwards.
Which lost time was technical, and why?
The engineering basis for NPT and rig-time attribution, separating primary from consequential delay so that a delay or quantum analysis rests on the right events.
Did the equipment or the service perform as it should?
MPD packages, rotating control devices, chokes, mud gas separators and riser gas handling; operator, contractor and service-company technical performance against scope and design.
Does the opposing technical opinion hold?
Review of technical claims, counterclaims and opposing expert reports — their assumptions, data gaps and the causation theories they leave untested.
How it is used
Four ways in, from a first read to sustained support.
01
Preliminary technical review
A short, scoped read of the key records to tell counsel whether there is a technical case, where it is strong, and where it is not.
02
Expert consultant to counsel
Technical document review, chronologies, witness and interview preparation, and the questions to put to the other side’s witnesses and experts.
03
Support to a testifying expert
Drilling and well-operations depth for an expert team whose own discipline is quantum, delay, forensic or construction.
04
Independent technical advisor
For a party that wants an independent view of an operational event before positions harden — often the cheapest point at which to learn how strong a position is.
How opinions are formed
Evidence first, and engineering only.
01
The record leads
Conclusions are built from contemporaneous data and documents, and every one is traceable back to them.
02
Assumptions on the page
Where the record is silent, the assumption that fills the gap is stated — and so is what would change it.
03
Reproducible where possible
Calculations and model runs are set out so that another engineer, including the other side’s, can repeat them.
04
Engineering, not law
Breach, liability and the meaning of a contract are for counsel and the tribunal. The opinion stops at the engineering.
Independence
The duty runs to the tribunal.
Where an opinion is given to a tribunal, the duty runs to the tribunal, not to the party that instructs it. No fee depends on the outcome. Every matter starts with a conflict check, and matters involving engineering work the founder delivered — at this practice or in a previous role — are declined. The full independence standard.
Please do not send case documents until a conflict check is complete and a confidentiality framework is in place.
A technical question in a dispute?