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As engineers we all know that stress and strain calculations must be based on a difference between an initial and final condition pressures, temperatures, axial and torsion conditions).  Most engineering focuses heavily on determining the final condition and assumes that we know the initial condition completely.  For oil and gas wellbore design that is not true.  We often make inappropriate guesses at the undisturbed earth temperature profile (UDT) from only two points (or even sometimes less!) and them assume that the UDT is the initial condition temperature.  This is a dangerous and false assumption.  Disasters have occurred as a result of ignoring the initial condition.  Parts of the wellbore can be either over-designed (costly) or under-designed (dangerous).  This talk is focused on the reasons and methods for determining accurate initial conditions and their usefulness.