Seifert Subsurface Understanding, LLC
Services & Expertise
Helping understand the subsurface with clarity and care.
SSU offers the unique opportunity to have an experienced Chief Production Geologist/PE “in your back pocket" through a fractional-leadership model. The focus is on delivering truly integrated leadership across subsurface disciplines to accelerate and deepen subsurface understanding, improve development and investment decisions, and enhance ways of working for more efficient and higher‑quality outcomes. Project experience spans the US GoA, Middle East, Brazil, Trinidad, Alaska, UK, Canada, China, Venezuela, Indonesia, Australia, Algeria, Gabon, and Nigeria.
Services Provided
Integrated Subsurface Workshops (Infill Wells, Water Injectors, FDP, LTRO)
Workshops designed to rapidly build shared understanding and align teams on subsurface characterization, development options, and decision pathways. (As Shell’s LTRO Manager, I created and led the LTRO program, overseeing more than 30 integrated subsurface workshops in its initial 3.5 years.)
Applications
Build integrated subsurface understanding for reservoir characterization, modeling studies, development phasing, annual business planning or field development planning.
Assess and identify infill well opportunities (OP & WI) and optimize the drilling sequence.
Identify and evaluate of optimal reservoir recovery mechanisms, including waterflood additions or expansions.
Specific Support:
Guide asset teams in preparing workshop-ready products.
Guide preparation of grounding materials in a fundamentally different way — more integrated, more aligned, and explicitly oriented toward outcomes rather than discipline-based.
Lead the workshop with the asset team and additional experts.
Provide notes, recommendations, and support for report writing and report-out presentations.
Key Enabler and What Differentiates This From Most Workshops:
Focused, outcome-oriented facilitation built on a true best-solution mindset — avoiding the-all-too-common tendency of workshops to validate legacy thinking instead of challenging it.
Model Framing Workshops for IRM Projects
Guide the development of decision‑based integrated reservoir modeling (DB‑IRM) and multi‑scenario modeling workflows.
Prepare and lead framing workshops that result in a targeted, decision‑aligned modeling strategy.
Coaching Offerings
Coaching for Workshop Facilitation: Help facilitators plan, prepare, and run meaningful workshops using a decision‑based relevancy framework. Instead of following standard, discipline‑driven routines, we begin by identifying the decisions that must be made—then determine the technical work, level of quality, and detail required to support those decisions with confidence.
Coaching for Integrated Review of Project Proposals: Deploy a structured, integrated approach to reviewing project proposals, with a focus on clarity for decision makers. This includes evaluating benchmarked numbers, proper uncertainty ranges, risk assessments, and stress-tested risk mitigation plans.
Assurance Support & Sense Checking
Review field development plans (FDP) and reservoir development plans (RDP).
Review infill well plans and well proposals.
Emphasize integration, benchmarking, and analogs.
Focus on uncertainty, risk, and scenario quality.
Support evaluation of high‑risk scenarios and contingency planning (“Plan B”).
Improve documentation and communication of subsurface risks and outcomes to decision makers.
Strongest Assurance Differentiator:
Deep experience leading assurance‑grade documentation focused on benchmarking outcomes, articulating key uncertainties, communicating quantified risks, and stress-testing mitigation strategies.
Advisory to Senior Management for changing Ways of Working (WoW)
Help understand why the portfolio behaves as it does and act as an “Agent of Change.”
Sense‑check development products and address decision‑maker “chronic unease.”
Support transitions to leaner staffing models and new ways of working.
Reinforce back‑to‑basics technical work and quantification (not everything requires modeling).
Digital Tools for LTRO-Type Work
Evaluate software options and guide digital tool implementation projects that support integrated subsurface workflows.
Reserves Audit & Review
Review project maturity and volume classification in alignment with SEC guidelines.
Address delays or gaps in reserves updates and help teams improve reserves governance.
Portfolio Screening Preparation
Identify which projects have highest potential for deeper review.
Analyze project maturation databases to highlight opportunities and risks.
Benchmarking of Staff Resources & Allocation
Determine appropriate subsurface staffing levels for asset groups.
Evaluate flexible staffing models and assess whether “agile team” structures are an option.