About Us

Lance is a registered professional engineer with 15 years of experience in the exploration and production side of the oil and gas industry. His areas of expertise are drilling, completions, workovers and abandonments.

Lance worked for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (formerly MMS) for 12 years. He started working for MMS in 2002 as a Field Engineer in the New Orleans District Office where he worked for 4 years in drilling and workovers. Lance then spent 2 years working as a Civil Penalty Reviewing Officer in the Office of Safety Management. From there he served as the Senior Drilling Engineer in the Technical Assessment and Operations Support Section. In 2011, Lance became Chief of the District Operations Support Section where he was responsible for the review and approval of all Well Containment Screening Tools, all BOP control system drawings, managing the Idle Iron Program as well as implementing all policies regarding drilling, completions, workovers, and abandonments.

Lance has a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering as well as a Bachelor of Science in Geology from Louisiana State University.

Andy Jefferies is the founder and principal owner of Deep Sea Development Services Inc. (DSDS) and a co-Founder of Integrity Management & Response (IMR). DSDS, founded in 1996, is a Subsea Engineering company focused on field development and subsea operations support. Prior to founding DSDS, Andy was the Engineering Manager at H.O. Mohr Research and Engineering (HOMRE). Prior to HOMRE, Andy worked in various roles at McEvoy Oilfield Ltd. in the UK and US.

Andy’s first subsea project was the Shell Esso Cormorant field in the UK sector, specifically involved in the insert valve development of part of the Underwater Manifold Center (UMC). The UMC was installed and operated in a water depth of approximately 450’. The UMC was an extension of the Exxon SPS project which was a pioneer in the development of subsea technology in the late 70’s.

By contrast, Andy was part of the ground breaking Beacon Shenandoah development which required the development of new technologies to accommodate mudline shut-in pressures in excess of 15,000 psi in a water depth of 6,000 ft.

Over the past 40+ years in the industry, Andy has worked in the development of fluid swivel technologies for FPSOs, fatigue testing of premium threads for sour service, perforating gun shaped charge performance evaluation, reeled SCR design well containment program development and support, as well as multiple key field development efforts. Some of these key projects include:

• Matterhorn – subsea infrastructure and TLP
• Independence Hub – subsea infrastructure and FPS
• Thunder Hawk – subsea infrastructure and FPS
• Medusa – subsea infrastructure and SPAR
• Galapagos (Santiago/Santa Cruz) – subsea infrastructure and FPS upgrade
• Shenandoah – subsea infrastructure and FPS
• Winterfell - subsea infrastructure tied back to an existing SPAR

In 2010, DSDS was involved in the BP response to the Macondo incident. Following that exposure, DSDS was involved with a number of independent operators in the formation of the Helix Well Containment Group (HWCG). Andy was part of the team that developed the HWCG well containment plan which resulted in the first post moratorium BOMRE drilling permit approval. For the next 9 years, Andy expanded DSDS’s role in well containment support to the industry, culminating in the formation of IMR in conjunction with J. Connor Consulting, Inc. (JCC). IMR now supports 17 operators domestically across both established response equipment programs (MWCC and HWCG) and supports many of these operators internationally with their OSRL based organization programs. This support is in the form of up to 35 trained responders as well as the 24/7/365 availability of the IMR Emergency Operations Center (EOC).

Dr. Amir Paknejad is the director of Integrity, Management & Response (IMR) and manages IMR’s 24/7 dedicated Source Control Emergency Response Center to quickly respond to any type of source control event, host drills or to house entire source control section during any type of response and offering wide range of unparalleled source control expertise.

Amir is a Texas board certified professional engineer and has worked on transient multi-phase flow modeling for more than 15 years.

He has developed the Well Intervention Toolkit during his tenure at Boots&Coots which was utilized for several relief well intervention and P&A operations. Amir has worked on more than 500 blowout and kill contingency plans covering the determination of the kill requirements such as kill rate, mud density, equipment, pumping resources, number of relief wells and more. Amir has been in charge of WCD and soft shut-in analysis in more than 100 planned or unannounced real-time source control and emergency response drills held by MWCC, HWCG and OSRL members in US, Europe and Australia. Also, he has responded to several well control incidents.

Amir has proudly graduated with a masters and a PhD in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University and has numerous peer reviewed publications.

With over 25 years in the oil and gas industry, Scherie has extensive knowledge and experience in environmental and regulatory compliance both in deep water and shelf operations. She recruited and managed teams of regulatory professionals characterized by efficiency, collaboration, and commitment to compliance while meeting and exceeding stakeholder expectations.

Scherie is a respected leader in the industry, actively participating in advocacy efforts at a region and national level. She was chair of the Gulf Coast Environmental and Regulatory Affairs Group and chaired the Drilling Subcommittee of the Offshore Operators Committee for many years.

Scherie brings a passion for excellence, compliance, efficiency and doing things the right way to the team at IMR.