To register to attend this symposium, please click here.

Last-minute Information and Communications:

• Preliminary Agenda (10-06-03)
• General Information (10-06-03)
• Information on accessing LBNL site for the symposium (10-06-03)
• Bus Schedule from/to Berkeley Hotels (10-06-03)
• Information for Oral and Poster Presenters and Session Chairs (10-06-03)
• Email message from the symposium organizers (9-24-03)
  

The subsurface environment is increasingly being used for the injection disposal or storage of liquids, gases and even slurries generated by industrial, oil and gas, and municipal facilities, in addition to its widespread utilization as a source of drinking water. With such exploitation, numerous technical and scientific problems arise, which are commonly addressed in various research studies and case history analyses. In recent years, the pace of development continues to accelerate, and as new applications of underground injection are developed, both the science and technology addressing safety assessment and monitoring methods become ever more sophisticated.

The First International Symposium on the subject was held at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1994. Key papers from that symposium were revised, reviewed and published in a book by Academic Press, which is still very much in demand. This Second International Symposium on Underground Injection Science and Technology provides a timely opportunity to take stock of developments over the past seven years, assess the state of the art and anticipate future trends. Scientific and engineering issues underlying and cross-cutting the so-called Class I (deep industrial/municipal), Class II (oil &gas-related), Class III (solution mining) through Class V (other wells, generally shallow) wells under US EPA classification will be addressed. The Symposium will provide for a dialog and exchange of ideas, which will enhance the ability of participating scientists and engineers to address the challenges and opportunities attending utilization of the subsurface environment for underground injection practices. The Symposium also provides the opportunity to open lines of communication between researchers, practicing engineers and scientists from many countries interested in the subject.

General Topics

• General issues; historical, regulatory, statistics
• International practices and regulations
• Scientific issues: site characterization, modeling, chemical fate of injected fluids, new measurement approaches, etc.
• Engineering issues: well construction, well testing, local and regional monitoring, etc.
• Economics; cost benefit and risk analysis
• Applications and case histories for all types of injection wells
• Underground sequestration of carbon dioxide
• Injection of solid wastes (i.e., slurry injection)
• Liquid radioactive waste injection in Russia, etc.
• Panel discussions
  1. International practices survey
  2. International collaboration in research
  3. International project on model testing, safety assessments and mutual peer review

Symposium Format

The Symposium will consist of a single series of oral sessions and one or two poster sessions to be held during the first three days. Papers in both oral and poster sessions are treated equally for publication in the Proceedings and the subsequent Book. The fourth day of the Symposium will be devoted to a field trip to a site of scientific and technical interest (see below).

Field Trip

With the kind support of Calpine Corporation, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in an optional day-long field trip on the last day of the Symposium (Saturday, October 25) to visit The Geysers geothermal field, north of San Francisco. The Geysers, the largest steam field in the world, has been under commercial exploitation since 1960. To replenish part of the fluid extracted, surface and treated sewage is being injected back into the geothermal reservoir.

During the trip the participants will be able to observe the extensive development of the area, including pipelines, pumping stations and other surface equipment, injection wells, and perhaps the sewage treatment plant associated with the project. Technical personnel will describe the different aspects of the operation. On the way to and back from the site, stops will be made at places of more general interest including the Wine Country. The trip will be arranged by Ali Khan, California DOGGR, George Robin, EPA-IX and Marcelo Lippmann, LBNL.

The costs of the trip, including transportation, lunch and dinner will be $95. Early registration is advised, as the number of participants that can be accepted for the field trip is limited to 50.

Location

The Symposium will be held at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California. Details on the location of the Lab are online.

Registration and Fees

Please register for the conference as soon as possible by clicking here.

There will be two levels of fees: $175 if registration is made before August 15, 2003, and $230 after this date. Students can register at the $100 level. In addition, the optional field trip will cost $95 per person for trasnportation, lunch and dinner.

Important Dates

• August 15, 2003: Deadline for early registration (at a lower rate), see above. Those interested in attending the Symposium and the field trip are urged to register as soon as possible.
  
• September 15, 2003: Final day for reservations at the Shattuck Hotel and the Hotel Durant in Berkeley. Please contact the hotels directly.
  
• October 22-24, 2003: Symposium
  
• October 25, 2003: Symposium field trip
  

Invitation of Expression of Interest and Submission of Abstracts

Please send your expression of interest immediately by an informal e-mail to the Symposium Organizers (see below), and your name will be included in the Symposium's e-mail list for all future communications. We are also receiving abstracts for the Symposium now. They should be e-mailed to the Organizers (see below) by e-mail attachments as a Word file or RTF file. The abstract should be about one page long (certainly not more than two pages, including figures if needed), single-spaced, using Times New Roman 12 pt. font.

Instructions for full manuscript preparation

Manuscripts for the Symposium's CD should not exceed eight single-space pages (including figures) or approximately 4,000 words. Authors who feel that it is essential for the integrity of the presentation of their work to submit longer manuscripts, should contact the Symposium Organizers. The manuscripts should be typed using Times New Roman 12 pt. font.

Manuscripts should be submitted as Word files by e-mail to the Organizers, who should also be consulted if the authors wish to submit their manuscripts using different format.

Symposium Organizers:

Chin-Fu Tsang, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
John A. Apps, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Advisory Committee:

Sally Benson, LBNL
Charles Byrer, DOE/FE-NETL,
Yucheng Chai, National Natural Science Foundation, China
James Clark, DuPont
Emilio Custodio, Spanish Geological Survey, Spain
Ken Davis, SMRI
Leslie Knight, NIREX, UK
Michael Knight, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Bruce Kobelski, EPA/HQ
Valery A. Lebedev, MINATOM, Russia
Michael Paque, GWPC
Andrei I. Rybal'chenko, VNIPIPT, Russia
Robert E. Smith, EPA/HQ
Yanxin Wang, China University of Geosciences, China
Stephen Wickham, Galson Sciences Ltd., UK

Contact Information

Dr. Chin-Fu Tsang or Dr. John A. Apps
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
1 Cyclotron Road, MS 90-1116
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel. 1 510 486 5782 or 1 510 486 5193
E-mail: cftsang@lbl.gov or jaapps@lbl.gov

Proceedings and Post-symposium Publications

The proceedings of the Symposium will include a hard-copy volume with extended abstracts of all papers, and a CD-ROM with the full papers. The proceedings will be prepared for distribution at the Symposium.

Arrangements have been made to publish a significant number of the papers presented at the Symposium in special issues of two scientific journals, Environmental Geology and Transport in Porous Media. Upon review of the manuscripts and input from the Advisory Committee, the authors will be advised whether their papers have the potential for being published in one or the other of these journals. Papers, whether presented originally in oral or poster form, will be treated equally without distinction. The authors, whose papers are selected for publication, will have the opportunity to revise and resubmit their manuscripts based on comments and discussions at the Symposium. The papers will then undergo the normal peer review and revision procedures before acceptance.

An arrangement has been made with Elsevier Science Publishers to prepare an edited book on the subject with chapters based on selected papers from the Symposium. The process will be similar to that for the Journal Special Issues outlined above.