Oilfield NORM Defense, Southwestern Mississippi
Assisted in the technical defense of a large multinational oil company which was a predecessor in interest Mississippi oil fields in which NORM-related claims were brought.
The first matter involved assertions of NORM, hydrocarbon and hazardous substance contamination of soil and surface water at an historic production location in Adams County, Mississippi. The second matter involved claims of field-wide groundwater contamination and widespread surface contamination with NORM and nonhazardous oil field wastes in the Brookhaven oil field (~20 square miles in Lincoln County, Mississippi).
Assisted in the defense of Chevron in a series of actions involving allegations Worked with legal team to define the approach to technical defense of the case, located and retained expert witnesses, provided liaison with technical experts, reviewed and analyzed plaintiffs and experts opinions and documents, provided near-real-time technical analysis of plaintiffs’ experts’ testimony during depositions and hearings, drafted defense expert
witness affidavits, managed and directed field sampling efforts, managed and directed data compilation of geologic and petroleum engineering data, drafted and presented mock trial testimony, and managed and directed production of geologic and petroleum engineering trial exhibits.
Assisted in the defense of Chevron in an action in the Baxterville oil field in Lamar County, Mississippi. The case involved allegations of field-wide groundwater contamination and widespread surface contamination with NORM and non-hazardous oil field wastes. Worked with legal team to define to define the approach to technical defense of the case, located and retained expert witnesses, provided liaison with technical experts, reviewed and analyzed plaintiffs’ experts’ opinions and documents, provided near-real-time technical analysis of plaintiffs’ experts’ testimony during depositions and hearing, managed and directed data ompilation of geologic and petroleum engineering data, and managed and directed production of geologic and petroleum engineering exhibits.
Worked with legal team to define the approach to technical defense of the case; located and retained expert witnesses; provided liaison with technical experts; reviewed and analyzed plaintiffs, experts’ opinions, and documents; and organized field sampling efforts.
Natural Resource Damages, Calcasieu Estuary, Louisiana
The Calcasieu Estuary includes the area of the Calcasieu River from northern Moss Lake to the salt water barrier at Lake Charles. The Calcasieu Estuary is an industrialized area where several petrochemical and agrochemical plants manufacture and process diverse products including, petroleum fuels, lubricating oil, chlorinated solvents, synthetic rubber, olefins and pigments. Industrialization of this area took place beginning in the 1920s, but greatly intensified during the Second World War and expanded even more in the post-war period.
In the early 1990s federal and state natural resource trustees began a natural resource damages action against industrial concerns that discharged to the estuary. Lithochimeia provided technical assistance to counsel for a predecessor in interest to numerous industrial sites surrounding the Calcasieu estuary. Assistance provided included construction of current and waste profiles for all industrial sites surrounding the estuary from a consideration of the processes employed at these sites, review of environmental sampling data, air photo review of GIS mapping.