Vice President – Engineering

 

Dr. Warneke has 16 years of Cavern Drilling, Mining and Operations experience. He began working as an underground mining engineer/production supervisor at the Cargill Salt Mine at Avery Island. Dr. Warneke then left his position to obtain a Ph.D. in Mining Engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology. After earning his Ph.D., he became a Research Fellow for the CDC/NIOSH Spokane Research lab conducting health and safety research in underground mines relating to blasting practices in weak rock mass mines, roof control in rock burst prone mines, and other projects. In 2010, Dr. Warneke joined Texas Brine Company as Senior Mining Engineer providing leaching simulations, long term cavern field planning, and assistance to well workovers.  In 2012, he became Manager of Wells placing him in charge of maintenance of all caverns, head of engineering of new caverns, and responsible for all regulatory requirements.  On August 3rd, 2012, the Bayou Corne Sinkhole occurred, Dr. Warneke was tasked with overseeing the company’s technical response to the sinkhole. This included designing instrumentation, drilling the re-entry well into the failed cavern, installing shallow aquifer relief wells, leading a multiple team of experts relating to geophysics, rock mechanics, soil mechanics, slope stability and water quality. Currently, Dr. Warneke is Vice President of Engineering at Cavern Solutions, Inc. Since joining Cavern Solutions, Dr. Warneke has become a  3rd party subject matter expert (brine mining, hydrocarbon storage, field planning and integrity analysis) for operators, conducting failure analysis on caverns close to the edge of salt domes, creating and implementing cavern integrity management programs (Gas and Hydrocarbon storage,) planning seismic acquisition to help determine salt sediment interface on flanks of salt domes, and conducting asset studies for optimization of hydrocarbon storage and purchase/lease of salt caverns.