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AAPG Home : Meetings : 2008 ACE-San Antonio : Luncheons : All-Convention
In times of rapid change, the past often speaks loudly to the present and future. Now is such a moment for the petroleum industry. New geological frontiers are beckoning. We are seeing astonishing advances in technology along with market transformations and openings that are dramatically altering the business and science of petroleum. How will these and other changes shape the future of the petroleum industry and petroleum geology?
No one, of course, can accurately answer such a question. However, history offers precedents, analogues and examples that may help assess the challenges ahead. In particular, the story of how Shell Oil turned the Gulf of Mexico into the most explored, drilled and developed offshore petroleum province in the world can provide a “usable past” for the oil and gas industry going forward.
As the discovery and production of onshore oil in the United States faced an uncertain future after the Second World War, the offshore frontier in the Gulf of Mexico beckoned. Shell Oil Company pioneered many of the early moves into the Gulf and during the next 50 years the company led the industry every step of the way into deeper water. Innovation at Shell Oil was a cumulative process, as the company’s geoscientists and engineers built on a halfcentury of knowledge and improvements to technical systems. Shell Oil's story is unique, but it also illuminates the modern history of the petroleum industry.
This company’s experiences offer a starting point for examining the understudied topics of strategic decision-making, scientific research, management of technology and corporate organization and culture within modern oil companies. The lasting achievement of this company was its ability to recognize and address the offshore imperative that has now spread to other companies and regions around the world.
Tyler Priest, Ph.D. is Clinical Professor and Director of Global Studies at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Public History Program at the University of Houston and a partner in History International, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in corporate and public history projects. He received his B.A. in history from Carleton College, his Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught at Middlebury College in addition to the University of Houston.
He has served as chief historian on a Shell Oil corporate history project, chief historian on a Department of Interior sponsored project to document the history of the offshore oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico and is currently chief historian on another Department of Interior project to document the history of the offshore fabrication and shipbuilding industry along the Gulf Coast. He is also chief historian for the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) history project. Most recently, he is the author of The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (Texas A&M Press, May 2007).
His previous publications include Global Gambits: Big Steel and the U.S. Quest for Manganese Ore (Greenwood Press, 2003) and Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (Gulf, 1997). He is currently working on two other book projects about the history of offshore oil: Ever Deeper: The Technology and Strategy of Petroleum Exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and The Battles for the Tidelands: The History of Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing in the United States.
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) does not endorse or recommend any products and services that may be cited, used or discussed in AAPG publications or in presentations at events associated with AAPG.
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