Abstract
This chapter discusses advancement of the offshore industry in the Gulf of Mexico and identification of several technical challenges and alternatives to overcome those challenges. World War II stopped the move offshore in its tracks, as mobilization for a war on two fronts became the top priority of the nation, the oil industry, and Brown & Root. Yet despite military and legal constraints in the years from 1941 to 1953, the offshore oil industry made notable advances. As companies first entered the Gulf, they identified the technical challenges they would have to overcome to create an efficient technical system for offshore oil and gas production. The competitive race to build such a system then began in earnest, as companies explored alternatives in designing and building offshore facilities. During the race into the Gulf after World War II, three approaches to offshore development emerged—small platforms with tender vessels, larger self-contained platforms, and mobile drilling vessels for exploration combined with permanent platforms if large deposits of oil and gas were discovered. Before the war, offshore drilling sites had been leased from state governments, although federal agencies such as the War Department and the Coast Guard had regulated the design and construction of these and other structures built in the nation's navigable waters. The combined design challenges posed by waves, soil conditions, and installation at sea presented barriers to the rapid expansion of the offshore industry. Such challenges were heightened by the lack of established firms capable of delivering the goods and services required in the construction and operation of offshore structures. As companies addressed these challenges, they had to make informed investment decisions amid considerable uncertainty. The missing link in the system of technology needed for more efficient offshore development was a truly mobile drilling rig for exploration. These advances began to emerge in the late 1940s. Congress enacted the Tidelands Act of 1953, which validated all state leases issued before the Supreme Court decisions in 1947 and 1950 and established a system of shared control in which the federal government had the authority to lease all lands outside of a given distance from the shore.