Thirty-three years of petroleum and petrochemical analytical chemistry — Chevron, ExxonMobil, Caleb Brett, Inspectorate. I've usually seen your problem before, or the three problems it's made of. Tell me what's fighting back. Worst case, you leave with a direction. Best case, we scope a path forward.
No hourly meter, no discovery-call sales script. A working conversation between chemists, then — only if it earns it — a fixed-price proposal you can score.
Any analytical problem — instrument, method, data, direction. If it's not a fit for me, I'll point you in the right direction anyway — the right method, the right tool, sometimes the right person. That costs you nothing either.
Refinery and inspection data is sensitive — I've lived that for three decades. Happy to sign a mutual NDA before you show me anything. Your data stays yours; my methods stay mine. Clean lines, on paper.
If there's a real project, you get a written proposal: fixed project price, fixed timeline, and the success metric stated up front — so you can score the result. No hourly billing, no open-ended engagements.
Deliverables show their work — every conclusion with its reasoning, every calculation reproducible, every claim honest about where it holds and where it breaks. If something doesn't survive scrutiny, you hear it from me first.
Three decades across refinery and inspection labs builds a pattern library no course teaches. What I bring is experience and analytical insight — the ability to look at a symptom and recognize what it usually means, what it sometimes means, and which question separates the two. That's why even a quick conversation with me is often worth it: thirty minutes of the right questions can save a month in the wrong direction.
The fastest thing I offer, and often the most valuable. Describe the symptom — the method that drifts, the peak that shouldn't be there, the number that won't reconcile — and I'll tell you honestly what I think it is, what I'd try first, and whether you even need me beyond the call. Free, and I mean it.
Start talking →The analyte, matrix, or separation that isn't in a manual — or the method that used to work and quietly stopped. Developed, validated, and documented with ASTM-style rigor, every decision explained so your lab owns it after I leave.
Talk methods →A second set of eyes on results that don't add up — ambiguous identifications, instruments that disagree, "is this real or an artifact?" I read the data, not just the report, and show the reasoning behind every call.
Get another read →An honest referee for an analytical claim — a vendor's, a lab's, or your own. I won't rubber-stamp and I won't overclaim — that's the point of asking me. Useful before you buy, before you publish, before you argue.
Ask for a straight answer →And when the right fix turns out to be a tool that doesn't exist — a calculator, a parser, a piece of workflow software — I can usually build it myself. The chemist and the builder being the same person is rare, and it means nothing gets lost in translation. Scope a tool →
Running the same SOP five hundred times with no deviation. I'm one person, and I'm a hard-problem consultant — not a staffing agency, not a keep-the-line-moving hire. Telling you that up front is exactly the honesty you're buying.
Thirty-three years in refinery and inspection laboratories — Chevron, ExxonMobil, Caleb Brett, Inspectorate — running the methods most labs only read about: GC and GC-VUV, sulfur speciation, fuels, LPG, inspection and metrology.
Along the way he started building his own software — analytical tools that show the evidence behind every answer, including a patent-pending identification platform. Not because he set out to be a programmer, but because the tools he needed didn't exist.
The operating rule, in and out of the lab: state the metric up front, show every step, and let the customer score the result. Active in ASTM technical committees; based in Deer Park, Texas, at the center of the Gulf Coast refining corridor.
A method question, results that don't add up, an NDA-first project, or "I don't even know what to ask" — it all starts the same way. Direct to me; replies come from Michael, not a queue.