Energy Pioneers Podcast

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Don Vardeman championed successive applications of the production spar technology for deepwater development, and by his leadership in deepwater mega projects has provided an important example for Project Management in the offshore oil & gas industry. His untiring efforts in technolo...

The Glomar Challenger was one of the most important deep sea drilling ships ever built, not simply because of its influence on the modern-day drill ship technology for the offshore industry, but in a broader sense, it changed the way we understood Earth’s dynamic geological and climate history. The exploration work on the Challenger over 15 years of subsurface coring in the deep oceans and in the polar regions, led to our understan...

Well control experts have played important roles in the oilfield through time. One name stands out, the feisty, fearless, fire-fighting legend from Texas Paul “Red” Adair.  Red Adair’s remarkable career span nearly 60 years. In 1959, Adair went off on his own and co-founded the Red Adair Company, which specialized in extinguishing oil well fires and capping blowouts. His innovative approach to well control, combined with a fearless...

Jim Rike was a pioneer inventor and developer of drilling and completion technology. He is best known as the “Father” of coiled tubing technology, which initially involved winding a long continuous length of small diameter steel pipe on a large spool (as fishing line on a reel) and injecting the length into a well that may or may not be under well pressure. The end of the injected tubing was fitted with various tools to do work in ...

Griff Lee entered the offshore industry with a wave of expansion in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1940s, when the first permanent structures of any sort to be operated in the open sea were designed and constructed. Working for New Orleans-based J. Ray McDermott, he helped develop the first generation of production platforms which were fabricated onshore, taken by barges to their sites, and then pinned to the ocean floor with piles...

In this episode, we feature Bruce Collipp, a legendary naval architect with Shell who developed numerous pioneering technologies and techniques to conquer the offshore. He is given credit for the design of the first semisubmersible floating drilling rig, the Blue Water 1. His innovative ideas and designs made possible the creation of a new generation of mobile offshore drilling units—MODUs--that were cap...

Throughout the history of this industry, there are a select few who have made significant contributions to business and technological innovation. These key individuals literally shaped the offshore industry. Doc LaBorde is one of them. He is considered by many to be the “Father of the Offshore Oil Industry.” LaBorde was involved in three successful offshore companies. He founded the Offshore Drilling and Exploration Company—ODECO--...

Mark A. Childers is an engineer, manager, inventor and pioneer in the development of offshore drilling and production.  He joined Humble Oil & Refining Co. (now ExxonMobil) as an engineer in the offshore oil and gas business in New Orleans.  At that time the offshore oil and gas industry was still young, but developing rapidly. Humble provided an outstanding training ground via assignments at the division level, headquarters, a...