DELTA SECTION SEPTEMBER 2025 MEETING
WHAT: NEVER WASTE A CRISIS, Aliso Canyon (CA) Blowout & Recovery
WHO: Alan Walker, Engineering Advisor, Energy & Geoscience Institute, University of Utah, SPE Distinguished Lecturer
WHEN: Monday, September 15, 2025 at 11am networking & lunch; 11:30am Presentation
WHERE: Viking Energy Office, 400 Magazine St, 4th floor (elevator available), Suite 400, downtown New Orleans, LA 70130 and Expert E&P office, 101 Ashland Way, second floor, (elevator available), Madisonville, LA, 70447
HOW: Alan Walker will speak in person at the Viking office downtown New Orleans. There will be a simultaneous Northshore meeting at Expert’s office open to the Delta community with a large screen in a conference room showing Alan Walker’s talk via TEAMS. In addition, members may participate as usual by their own TEAMS link.
FOOD: Light lunch at both locations
COST: FREE
RSVP to Mary O’Neill at cyberbrat@msn.com or Kevin Landry at Klandry@expertep.com. Please advise if you will be in person or via TEAMS. For in person attendance, please advise whether you will participate at the Downtown New Orleans location or the Northshore location.
Regarding downtown parking, first try parking on the street which is $6 for 2 hours (feed the meter which accepts credit cards) or use the Premium Parking lots at about $16 for 2 hours and reservable. See website parkopedia.com (for street parking & lot parking) or premiumparking.com (for lot parking).
Regarding Expert parking, use the parking lot on the west side of the building and if full, park along Ashland Way. There is no cost for parking.
Abstract
On October 23, 2015, the largest methane leak from a natural gas storage facility in US history was discovered by Southern California Gas Company (SoCal Gas) at the SS-25 well in its Aliso Canyon Storage Facility near Los Angeles. The blowout continued for 111 days and the well was permanently plugged and abandoned after emitting approximately 5 BCF of natural gas and extracting the failed casing to approximately 890 feet subsurface. The failure was the topic of lengthy reports by US DOE and DOT and Root Cause Analyses by Blade Energy and California state agencies.
Alan Walker was in his first week as a Supervising Petroleum Engineer of the Californian Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) when the leak was discovered and was selected to be DOGGR’s emergency response technical lead. He provided regulatory oversight for seven kill attempts, relief well drilling, the Control-Cement-Confirm operation, requirements to return the facility to service, and developing storage operations regulations.
Alan will provide a frank discussion of the blowout and the five-year effort to improve integrity of underground storage. This talk has applicability for repurposing and retrofitting projects globally. Alan will motivate the audience to develop a safety culture including Management of Change, Root Cause Analysis, and to “Never Waste a Crisis.”
Biography
Alan Walker is an Engineering Advisor at the Energy & Geo-science Institute (EGI), University of Utah. He counsels staff supporting geothermal, hydrocarbon, and carbon research. Alan’s career spans forty years of E&P engineering, regulatory affairs, and natural gas supply and storage throughout western North America.
Alan served nine years in the US Army and is a retired Army Reserve Special Forces colonel with over thirty years’ service. He served three combat tours in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Iraq. Alan has a B.S. in military engineering from West Point, an MBA from Rensselaer, and an M.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Utah.