by Bruce Wells | Feb 28, 2025 | Offshore History
Thousands of offshore petroleum structures provide energy — and marine habitats.
Offshore petroleum platforms act as artificial reefs, creating important marine habitats, according to scientists. Beginning with an Exxon experimental subsea structure in 1979, the U.S. government’s “Rigs to Reefs” program established the largest artificial habitat in the world.
The Gulf of Mexico, both onshore and offshore, has continued to be a key contributor to U.S. oil and natural gas resources and energy infrastructure. Federal offshore oil production in 2023 accounted for 15 percent of total U.S. crude oil and five percent of natural gas production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Offshore platforms make good artificial reefs. The open design attracts fish — and divers — where they can swim easily through the circulating water. Photo courtesy U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
(more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 22, 2025 | Offshore History
Exploring the 1969 offshore disaster and the geology of ancient natural petroleum seeps.
A 1969 oil spill from a California offshore platform transformed the public’s view of the U.S. petroleum industry and helped launch the modern environmental movement — and the Environmental Protection Agency. Ancient natural seeps continue to produce thousands of tons of oil every day.
On January 28, 1969, after drilling 3,500 feet below the ocean floor, a Union Oil Company drilling platform six miles off Santa Barbara, suffered a blowout. Between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil flowed into the Pacific Ocean and onto beaches, including at Summerland, where the U.S. offshore industry began in 1896 with drilling on oil well piers. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 21, 2025 | Offshore History
Post-WWII offshore technologies advanced petroleum exploration and production.
Following World War II, the U.S. offshore oil and natural gas industry achieved an important technological milestone in the Gulf of Mexico when Kerr-McGee drilled the first well out of sight of land.
The Kerr-McGee Kermac No. 16 platform began drilling 10 miles from the Louisiana shore on September 10, 1947, in continental shelf waters just 20 feet deep. With the season’s biggest hurricane arriving a week later, the experimental platform constructed by Brown & Root withstood 140 mph winds — another of its contributions to offshore technology. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 12, 2025 | Offshore History
Atomic Energy Commission robot inspired offshore petroleum industry’s remotely operated vehicles.
Shell Oil and the Hughes Aircraft in 1960 began modifying an advanced but landlocked “Manipulator Operated Robot” — soon known as Mobot — into one that could operate underwater. The result would lead to revolutionary offshore swimming machines for petroleum exploration and production.
Much of the 21st-century’s offshore oil and natural gas industry has relied on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that can trace their roots back to Howard Hughes, Jr. In the late 1950s, Hughes Aircraft created a Manipulator Operated Robot – Mobot – for the Atomic Energy Commission. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 6, 2025 | Offshore History
As the turn of the century approached, oil producing Ohio wells drilled far out over a reservoir mark the beginning of America’s offshore petroleum industry, according to Mercer County historians.
America’s first offshore drilling once was generally acknowledged to be over Louisiana’s Caddo Lake in 1911 – until researchers in Mercer and Auglaize counties in Ohio said otherwise.
Oil patch sleuths pointed to Mercer County documents recording wells producing oil above the waters of Grand Lake St. Marys at least 20 years before drillers ventured over the waters of Caddo Lake above the giant Caddo-Pine Island field. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Nov 6, 2024 | Offshore History
The U.S. offshore drilling for oil began in the late-19th century on lakes and at the ends of Pacific Ocean piers. Until an innovative Kerr-McGee drilling platform in 1947, no offshore drilling company had ever risked drilling beyond the sight of land.
Many of the earliest offshore oil wells were drilled from piers at Summerland in Santa Barbara County, California. Circa 1901 photo by G.H. Eldridge courtesy National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
In 1896, as enterprising businessmen pursued California’s prolific Summerland oilfield all the way to the beach, the lure of offshore production enticed Henry L. Williams and his associates to build a pier 300 feet out into the Pacific — and mount a standard cable-tool rig on it. (more…)
