Please Vote for Neal Byington
RESUME:
Hi, I am running for the position of Chair-Elect in the California
Section of the American Chemical Society. The following work related
information is provided so that you can have an idea of what I do at
work. What follows is an updated and thus current WEB version of a resume that has been previously
provided to many different attorneys over the years who were
representing defendants in court cases where I was scheduled
to be an expert witness for the government.
MAILING ADDRESS:
Department of Homeland Security
Bureau of Customs and Border Protection
San Francisco Laboratory
c/o Dr. Neal D. Byington
630 Sansome St., Rm. 1407
San Francisco, CA 94111
Phone-work: (415) 844-5744 ext. 216
E-Mail-work: neal.byington@dhs.gov
E-Mail-home: neal@byington.org
Personal Web Page: www.neal.byington.org
PROFESSIONAL TITLE:
National Petroleum Chemist
EXPERIENCE:
November 1980 to Present
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY:
National Petroleum Program
I and two other National Petroleum Chemists have responsibility for the technical design, implementation, and operation of the National Petroleum Program within the Department of Homeland Securities Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. We adopt, develop, implement, and maintain technical oversight and control over all petroleum imports into and exports from the United States of America. We provide technical advice to the Commissioner of Customs, senior executives of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, Customs Officers, and other governmental officials on Customs monitoring of all petroleum imports and exports as well as technical advice on petroleum and energy issues. Because of our experience and technical and trade knowledge of the field we have become an active technical consulting resource on petroleum issues for other governmental agencies.
For the past twenty-three years I have been primarily involved in the development of methodology for, and the determination of, the country-of-origin of crude oils and selected petroleum products. In general, the technical details of the investigative assistance portions of this work are restricted to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and selected portions of other U.S. government departments. This work has offered significant support for our embargoes of crude oil and petroleum products from Iran, Iraq, and Libya.
For the past decade I have been very actively involved in our technical support of the State Departments' International Security and Peace Keeping Operations' efforts with respect to enforcing the petroleum embargo portion of the U.N. Sanctions against Iraq. I developed the publicly available USCL Method 27-47, "Guidelines For Country-of-Origin Determinations of Distillate Petroleum Products From Iraq". I analyze the U.N. Iraq related oil smuggling samples that have been obtained by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard from detained vessels suspected of smuggling Iraq oil in violation of the U.N. sanctions against Iraq. Since the change of government in Iraq, the U.N. Sanctions and U.S. Embargo against Iraq oil have been removed. Currently we see samples of Iraq oil that is
alleged to have been smuggled by criminal smugglers.
PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS:
Chemistry of Complex Mixtures
I am very interested in developing and using pattern recognition techniques to observe similarities and differences between sets of complex fluids. This interest extends to the development and use of sophisticated analytical chemistry instrumentation to individually separate, identify, and quantify trace organic and inorganic constituents with these sets. Current work involves developing increasingly sophisticated methodology to determine the country-of-origin of crude oil, fuel oil, and aviation gasoline from some very interesting countries.
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. 1982, Analytical Chemistry
University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA
A.B. 1970, Chemistry
University of California, Berkeley, CA
HONOR SOCIETY:
Phi Kappa Phi
MAJOR HONORS:
Hammer Award, 1998, from the Vice President of the United States
Albert Gallatin Award, 2003, from the Department of the Treasury
PROFESSIONAL:
Memberships, Professional Organizations
American Chemical Society
Divisions of Analytical, Fuel, Geochemistry, and Petroleum
American Geophysical Union
American Society for Mass Spectrometry
Bay Area Mass Spectrometry
Northern California Society for Spectroscopy
Pacific Conference on Chemistry and Spectroscopy
Society for Applied Spectroscopy
POSITIONS, PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:
American Chemical Society
1996-1997 Division of Petroleum Chemistry, Area IV Representative
1997-Present Division of Petroleum Chemistry, Membership Chairman
2001-Present Alternate Councilor - California Section
American Petroleum Institute
1981-Present: U.S. Customs Service representative: API Committee on
Petroleum Measurement, sub-committees, and methods development
working groups. We develop, adopt, publish, and maintain the
petroleum measurement standards as found in the multi-volume
API Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards. These are the
standards that are used worldwide for the custody-transfer
measurement of crude oil and petroleum products.
Northern California Society for Spectroscopy
1990-1991 Secretary
1991-1992 Chair-Elect, (Program Chair)
1992-1993 Chair
1993-1994 Past-Chair
1996-1997 Secretary
1997-1998 Chair-Elect, (Program Chair)
Pacific Conference on Chemistry and Spectroscopy / ACS Western
Regional Meetings
1995-1998 Board of Directors, Pacific Conference on
Chemistry and Spectroscopy
1996 General Chair, 35th Pacific Conference on
Chemistry and Spectroscopy
1998 General Chair, 37th Pacific Conference on
Chemistry and Spectroscopy
2000 General Chair, 36th ACS Western Regional Meeting
QUALIFIED AND ACCEPTED EXPERT WITNESS IN FEDERAL COURTS:
1989 United States District Court, Eastern District of California
Sacramento, CA
1990 United States District Court
Phoenix, AZ
1993 United States Court of International Trade
New York Court, trial in San Francisco
2001 United States District Court
San Diego, CA