Offshore petroleum platforms act as artificial reefs, creating multiple marine habitats, according to scientists. Beginning in 1979 with an Exxon (ExxonMobil) experimental subsea structure, 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.

“Over 47 percent of total U.S. petroleum refining capacity is located along the Gulf Coast, as well as 51 percent of total U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity,” the government agency added.

With annual U.S. crude oil demand climbing to 19.1 million barrels of oil per day in 2022, offshore Gulf production has almost doubled since the 1980s. In September 2024, EIA forecast that 1.8 million barrels per day of crude oil would be produced in the Gulf in 2024 and 1.9 million barrels of oil per day in 2025.

With about 4,500 petroleum-related platforms offshore, EIA also noted the drilling and production structures have benefited both the economy and the marine environment — even with disastrous offshore accidents, including (Santa Barbara (1969), Exxon Valdez (1989), and Deepwater Horizon (2010). Improved mitigation efforts have been hard-earned.

New Marine Environments

In 1984, Congress established the National Fishing Enhancement Act “because of increased interest and participation in fishing at offshore oil and gas platforms and widespread support for effective artificial reef development by coastal states,” according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

The fishing enhancement legislation led to the National Artificial Reef Plan for turning old rigs into reefs. The act established national artificial reef standards as the Minerals Management Service (MMS) developed policies encouraging the reuse of obsolete offshore petroleum structures. 

MMS — the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in 2011 — required compliance with standards of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and criteria in the National Artificial Reef Plan of 1985. States were given authority to plan, construct, and manage artificial reefs.

Although Rigs to Reefs developed as an official policy in the mid-1980s, the concept was first explored in 1979. The National Artificial Reef Plan led to the development of government-endorsed artificial reef projects.

The first planned conversion took place in 1979 with the relocation of an Exxon experimental subsea structure from offshore Louisiana to an artificial reef site off Apalachicola, Florida.

A typical four-pile platform provides almost three acres of living and feeding habitat for thousands of species. Photo courtesy U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

Rigs to Reefs was designed to utilize offshore structures that were no longer producing, allowing them to remain in the marine environment. The result has been the creation of the largest artificial reef complex in the world.

Scientists have proclaimed the industry-government partnership in the Gulf of Mexico as a success story.

Thousands of Fish Habitats

Petroleum platforms are artificial habitats. Whether placed as an artificial reef or a working (producing petroleum) structure, they have been found to increase the algae and invertebrates that attract and significantly increase the numbers and species of fish.

However, when an offshore structure becomes obsolete, it typically is removed from the environment, taking away the habitat that it created and disrupting those organisms residing at the site.

Companies utilize tow-and-place, topple-in-place, or partial removal for old rigs.

To prevent this disruption, the Rig to Reefs program allows oil and natural gas companies to choose to donate the reef to a coastal state — using one of three methods: tow-and-place, topple-in-place, or partial removal.

According to Ocean Science (an MMS publication), the program benefits petroleum platform owners by eliminating the high cost of transporting the structure for disposal. States benefit as the retired platform develops into an area that enhances commercial and recreational fishing, tourism, and the biological community.

The marine populations that result from the recycled structures are called platform communities. Fish densities have been found to be 20 to 50 times higher than in open water. Each platform typically has supported more than 10,000 fish.

In addition, the platforms have become home to many other forms of sea life; barnacles and mussels dwell on the hard surfaces, and sea turtles are often found close by, according to marine scientists. One result is a complex food chain formed in environments that did not previously have characteristics to support natural reef communities.

Good Fishing

Seventy-five percent of recreational fishing trips in Louisiana visit one or more rig sites. The platforms are an ideal choice for artificial reefs. Size, density, and open design attract fish to the structures, where they can swim easily through the circulating water. Stable during storms, the supporting steel provides the hard surface needed to create coral communities. 

Coastal states benefit from offshore platforms: Seventy-five percent of recreational fishing trips in Louisiana visit one or more rig sites — for the excellent fishing.

To study life at artificial reef corals, federal agencies work with universities, including the Coastal Marine Institute (CMI) at Louisiana State University. Scientists also have been looking at the ecological effects of removing large numbers of petroleum structures.

In California, the populations of fish living in platform communities are the subject of several research projects. With many areas overfished, the increased population of fish at artificial reefs could be valuable.

Working with the petroleum platforms in the Gulf of Mexico has set a good example, especially for those who like to fish at them. “The fishing here is spectacular, whether it’s snapper, amberjack, or grouper,” proclaimed charter boat Capt. Kerry Milano of Venice, La.

“There’s really no limit to what you can catch at these offshore platforms,” the skipper added, “This is some of the best fishing anywhere in the world.”

Article adapted from Ocean Science, March 2008, a quarterly magazine resource for ocean science and offshore technological information. Learn more at the BSEE’s Offshore Stats and Facts.

Overfished Species Habitat

Whether it is an operating production platform or a retired rig intentionally placed, a typical four-pile platform jacket provides almost three acres of living and feeding habitat for thousands of underwater species. That’s beneficial for marine life, according to marine biologists, because the natural bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is a flat plain, comprised of mud, clay, and sand with very little natural rock bottom and reef habitat.

A June 2006 report by marine scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, demonstrates that California’s offshore oil and natural gas platforms are critical nursery habitats for a certain species of fish.

Scientists argue that offshore oil platforms should be protected to help revitalize the bocaccio rockfish population.

According to scientists, platforms play an important role in producing the young of a rockfish species on a scale that was previously unknown. The findings have the potential to cause a significant shift in conventional thinking regarding artificial reefs.

“This will have a huge impact on how we view these structures,” noted George Steinbach, executive director of the California Artificial Reef Enhancement Program. “These platforms are better nursery habitats than the natural reefs in the area. They are contributing to the recovery of a severely depleted species in a significant way.” 

Milton Love, PhD,  and his team of researchers found that the number of young Bocaccio rockfish around only eight platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel amounted to 20 percent of the average number found over the species’ entire range. The federal government classified the Bocaccio as “overfished” by commercial fleets.

According to Don Kent, president of Hubbs SeaWorld Research Institute (HSWRI), founded in 1963. “When 20 percent of the next generation of bocaccio for the entire West Coast is found in such a small area, you cannot ignore the importance of that area as habitat.”

Tom Raftican, president of United Anglers of Southern California, added that with the fishing data, “it’s clear that these platforms should also be protected to help revitalize the Bocaccio rockfish population.”

With facilities in San Diego and Carlsbad, California, and Melbourne Beach, Florida, the institute seeks “objective scientific solutions to challenges threatening ocean health and marine life.”

Learn more about offshore history and exploration technologies in Deep Sea Roughnecks and ROV — Swimming Socket Wrench. 

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Recommended Reading:  Rigs-to-reefs: the use of obsolete petroleum structures as artificial reefs (1987); Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997); The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2009). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Rigs to Reefs.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/rigs-to-reefs/. Last Updated: February 28, 2026. Original Published Date: June 1, 2008.

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As the 20th century approached, Ohio oil wells producing far out on a reservoir marked the true beginning of the U.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. The oil patch sleuths pointed to multiple county documents recording oil wells producing above Grand Lake St. Marys at least 20 years before drillers built platforms on Caddo Lake.

Oil wells on Grand Lake, Ohio, after heavy rains in 1887 caused a rise in the lake level. Photo courtesy Joyce Alig, Oil & Gas Boom, Mercer County and midwestern Ohio.

Work on the Ohio reservoir that would become Grand Lake St. Marys — about 60 miles north of Dayton — began in 1837 to support water levels of the Miami and Erie Canal. Eight years of construction (1,700 men earning 30 cents a day) took place near the towns of Celina and St. Marys.

By 1845 the reservoir covered 17,500 acres to a depth of no more than seven feet. It was the largest man-made body of water in the world at the time and successfully supported the vital commerce of the Miami and Erie Canal. Forty years later Ohio’s first oil boom began.

Independent producers in 1884 near Findlay discovered natural gas in a geologic formation known today as the Lima-Indiana trend. The formation would prove to stretch 260 miles across Ohio and Indiana. In coming years it would yield extraordinary quantities of natural gas and oil (an estimated 500 million barrels of oil from around 100,000 wells).

By the mid-1880s, exploration companies had followed the Lima-Indiana Trend southwest to the shores of Grand Lake St. Marys near the Indiana border. Local ventures, including Neeley-Clover Oil Company, Riley Oil Company, and Manhattan Oil Company, drilled successful oil wells to the reservoir’s shoreline, but going offshore presented a new set of challenges.

According to Joyce L. Alig (1942-2024), a longtime president of the Mercer County Historical Society, “the first oil well drilled in Celina, Ohio — on the west side of Grand Lake — was in June 1886 and in St. Marys — on the east side of Grand Lake — in July 1886. Citizens had homes around Grand Lake drilled oil wells in their backyards on the beach between their homes and Grand Lake.” 

Major storms and rains in February 1887 resulted in the rise of the level of Grand Lake. “This rise resulted in the platforms of the oil wells along the beach being covered with water,” Alig noted a century later. “The oil well platforms continued to be covered with water, i.e., the first offshore oil wells on the reservoir.” 

Offshore wells and “Cribs”

Contemporary accounts of over-water drilling describe the practice of building 14-foot-square “cribs” upon which traditional cable-tool rigs and their steam engines and boilers could be supported. Cribs had evolved as necessary engineering solutions to building bridges, dams, and other water structures.

Grand Lake St. Marys — hand-dug from 1837 to 1845 — originally was nine miles long by three miles wide. It supplied water to central Ohio’s Miami and Erie Canal until designated a “public recreation and pleasure resort” in 1915.

On Grand Lake St. Marys, oilmen built derricks atop cribs. New pipelines would carry the oil from these Ohio offshore wells to storage tanks hastily constructed on shore. The 1898 Auglaize County Atlas identified an abundance of oil wells surrounding the far eastern end of Grand Lake St. Marys and also shows wells built offshore.

The 1903 Ohio Geological Survey recorded, “By 1890 the productive territory had been pushed to the eastern border of the Grand reservoir, and a year later wells were being drilled in that body of water.”

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has noted that in 1891, “at the beginning of production in the water of Grand Lake St. Marys, wells were drilled within the canal reservoir mainly by small local companies…In less than ten years, more than 100 wells were drilled within the shallow waters of the lake.”

In 1915 the state of Ohio determined that with the canal no longer in use, Grand Lake St. Marys was repurposed as a public recreation and pleasure resort area, which it remains today. A modern DNR map still plots the locations of the historic offshore Ohio wells over the lake.

The Neely-Clover Oil Company was an early driller on the lake that completed many successful wells. In Wildcatting from Pennsylvania to Texas, author Harold Neely writes, “Part of the leases they had were out in the lake that was known as the Grand Reservoir of St. Marys, and these leases were secured from the state of Ohio. They drove pilings and set the rig up on platforms and drilled these wells, one to ten acres, and quite a bit of this state land was productive.”

Riley Oil Company drilled more than 100 oil wells in the reservoir, including the Riley-Mosher well, which began producing in 1886 and still produced 35 barrels a day as late as 1910. By then, however, the Ohio offshore oil boom was over.

In 1913 the New York Times reported the reservoir contained more than 100 oil wells, but exploration companies had moved on. Production on the waters of Grand Lake St. Marys lost its economic incentive when the astounding production from oilfields at Spindletop, Texas, drove the price of Ohio crude below 15 cents a barrel. The once plentiful derricks gradually disappeared into Ohio’s petroleum history.

Preserving Ohio Oil Patch History

Ohio historian and author Joyce L. Alig (1942-2024) edited almost 30 publications, including Our Post Card Past; Grand Lake St. Marys Ohio. After decades of research, she published in 2020 a book focusing on midwestern Ohio’s oil and natural gas history, 1886 through the 1890s.

Joyce L. Alig’s 2020 book on late 19th century Ohio petroleum history includes many first hand accounts from newspapers.

Messenger Press of Carthagena published Alig’s 236-page Oil & Gas Boom, Mercer County and Midwest Ohio, which examines the offshore wells on Grand Lake St. Marys, along with other petroleum production in Mercer and Auglaize counties.

“I may not be a professional geologist, but I am a historian,” the author noted shortly after publication in an email to the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. “The mix of geology and history is just like taking one exciting vacation,” she added.

In addition to the historic Grand Lake St. Marys offshore wells, Alig’s book offers firsthand accounts from newspapers “about the oil and gas wells being drilled, and the names of the sites and villages and farms where the wells were drilled, plus the dates, in Mercer, Auglaize, Van Wert, Darke Counties, Ohio and Jay County, Indiana.”

Oil wells on Grand Lake, Ohio, after heavy rains in 1887. Photo courtesy  Joyce Alig.

Alig noted it was important to include available late 19th century photos and clippings along with a detailed index that allows further research into local history and the stories of area citizens.

After the Ohio offshore wells, rigs appeared on Louisiana’s Caddo Lake above the giant Caddo-Pine Island field, as seen in this circa 1911 photo.

In 2005, the Ohio oil historian provided much of Ohio’s lake history research for “The First Over Water Drilling: The Lost History Of Ohio’s Grand Reservoir Oil Boom,” a peer-reviewed article by Judith Sneed of Mooringsport, Louisiana.

Sneed originally presented the article in Shreveport during a Petroleum History Symposium, hosted by the Petroleum History Institute of Oil City, Pennsylvania. Sneed’s abstract in the peer-reviewed Oil-History Journal notes:

In 1911 Gulf Oil Company’s Ferry Lake No.1 well was completed over the waters of Caddo Lake, Louisiana. It has long been touted as the location of the world’s first over water oil well. This accolade, however, is not correct. Stand alone oil wells produced commercial quantities of oil over a small lake in Ohio…How did we lose this bit of history?

Also see Offshore Petroleum History.

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Recommended Reading:  Oil & Gas Boom, Mercer County and Midwest Ohio (2020);*  Ohio Oil and Gas (2008);   Where it All Began: The story of the people and places where the oil & gas industry began: West Virginia and southeastern Ohio (1994). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

* Joyce L. Alig’s limited edition book is available from the Mercer County Historical Society for $45. Learn more at Lakefront Improvement Association.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Ohio Offshore Wells.” Authors: B.A. and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/ohio-offshore-wells. Last Updated: January 29, 2026. Original Published Date: January 13, 2011.

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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.

“The techniques, equipment, and resources necessary to combat an oil spill of this magnitude did not exist at the time,” notes one expert about the 1969 well blowout.

Problems at the Union Oil platform began when roughnecks began to retrieve the pipe to replace a drill bit and pressure became dangerously low, according to a report by the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

“A natural gas blowout occurred. An initial attempt to cap the hole was successful but led to a tremendous buildup of pressure. The expanding mass created five breaks in an east-west fault on the ocean floor, releasing oil and gas from deep beneath the earth,” UCSB noted.

It would take workers days to control the well — by pumping drilling mud down the borehole at a rate of 1,500 barrels an hour. “The techniques, equipment, and resources necessary to combat an oil spill of this magnitude did not exist at the time,” explained UCSB geologist Keith C. Clarke.

“On the eleventh day, chemical mud was successfully used to seal the cracks in the seafloor, but only after approximately three million gallons of oil escaped,” Clarke added.

In the spring following the Santa Barbara oil spill, Earth Day was born nationwide. “Many consider the publicity surrounding the oil spill a major impetus to the environmental movement,” Clarke said.

Petroleum fields and coastal natural seepage areas of California depicted in a 2010 U.S. Geological Survey map.

As public opinion turned against the petroleum industry and offshore exploration, President Richard Nixon, on December 2, 1970, signed an executive order establishing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). His action combined several federal agencies regulating the industry. 

“Images of spilled oil bubbling to the ocean’s surface and covering birds and other wildlife have firmly cemented in much of the public mind that offshore drilling is dangerous,” noted Drew Thornley in Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts.

Natural offshore seeps leak tons of oil every day — and have for thousands of years. Photo by Dave Valentine, University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Thus the means by which the U.S. obtains about 25 percent of the nation’s natural gas production and about 24 percent of its oil production have become, understandably, linked to environmental degradation,” Thornley added.

In October 2022, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported federal offshore oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico accounted for about 15 percent of total U.S. crude oil production and about 2 percent of total U.S. dry natural gas production.

According to the National Research Council, natural geologic processes are responsible for more than 60 percent of all the oil that enters North American ocean waters — accounting for more than 45 percent of the petroleum entering ocean waters worldwide.

Science of Seeps

A detailed study by Woods Hole and UCSB in 1990 was the first to quantify the amount of oil residue in seafloor sediments from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara.

The study estimated the amount of oil in the sediments downcurrent from the seeps to be the equivalent of approximately 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills. Most of the oil is degraded by microbes over time.

A 2009 study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of California, Santa Barbara, was “the first to quantify the amount of oil residue in seafloor sediments that result from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, California.” This graphic depicts what happens to the oil from a natural seep.

Researchers found that natural offshore seeps near Goleta, California, alone have leaked up to 25 tons of oil each day — for the last several hundred thousand years.

In Santa Barbara County, beached tar balls indicated the Summerland field extended into the Pacific — leading turn-of-the-century oil companies to build piers.

“The area around Santa Barbara is very geologically active because of the movement of the San Andreas and other faults. Extensive faulting or rupturing in the Earth allows oil and gas from subterranean reservoirs to seep up to the seafloor and ultimately into the ocean and to the atmosphere. But some oil solidifies to create asphalt volcanoes.” — Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Public debate continues about protecting the environment of coastal California. “Ironically, research shows that drilling can actually reduce natural seepage, as it relieves the pressure that drives oil and gas up from ocean floors and into ocean waters,” noted Thornley in his Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts.

Oil seeps in the vicinity of the Summerland field have existed since prehistoric times, according to geologists. The U.S. offshore exploration industry began there in 1896 with cable-tool drilling rigs on piers. A 2009 view of the beach, a California tourist destination, courtesy Wikipedia.

In 1999, two peer-reviewed studies found that natural seepage in the northern Santa Barbara Channel “was significantly reduced by oil production,” he concluded. Researchers found that seepage declined 50 percent over two decades because, “as oil was pumped from the reservoir, the pressure that drives natural seepage dropped.”

The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum educates visitors about California’s offshore industries, including the diving technologies used in the Santa Barbara Channel. Exhibits explain the continuing process of oil and natural gas emerging from natural seeps in the channel — now visited by tourists in boats.

To protect Southern California’s beaches, one community organization, Stop Oil Seeps California, has advocated lifting the state and federal moratoriums on offshore oil exploration and production, maintaining that “only through education can Californians and Americans learn the truth about the massive amounts of natural oil and gas seepage pollution coming from offshore Santa Barbara, California’s coastal areas.” 

Learn more about offshore exploration and production technologies at the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum.

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Recommended Reading: Slick Policy: Environmental and Science Policy in the Aftermath of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill (2018); Pico Canyon Chronicles: The Story of California’s Pioneer Oil Field (1985); Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language (2012). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information: Article Title: “Oil Seeps and Santa Barbara Spill.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/california-oil-seeps. Last Updated: January 20, 2026. Original Published Date: April 29, 2016.

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Shell Oil and Hughes Aircraft in 1960 began modifying an advanced but landlocked “manipulator operated robot” 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 the Manipulator Operated Robot — known as a Mobot — for the Atomic Energy Commission.

Working on land, the robot performed tasks in environments too radioactive for humans. Mobot weighed 4,500 pounds and worked with hydraulically powered steel claws and television eyes. It was linked by a 200-foot cable to the operator, who used pistol grips and levers. 

The first “manipulator operated robot” (Mobot) was built for the Atomic Energy Commission to work in a radioactive environment. Photo courtesy September 1960 Popular Mechanics article, “Marvelous Mobot Will Do Work Too Hot For Man.”

In 1960, Popular Science magazine described the advanced technology in “Marvelous Mobot Will Do Work Too Hot For Man.” The article reflected the era’s fascination with science fiction and new technologies.

“With electronic nerves, hydraulic muscles, and TV eyes, a robot whose arms are quite capable of playing golf or snuggling a blonde is ready to live far more dangerously than that,” proclaims the article’s first paragraph. The accompanying photo shows the “murderous impulse” of a wheeled Mobot behind a scientist as he watches three remote camera screens. The caption adds, “Never fear, he (the scientist) has it all under control.” 

The offshore petroleum exploration and production industry recognized the potential of technology for a submersible robot with “underwater electronic nerves, hydraulic muscles, and TV eyes.”

Howard Shatto Jr. received a 1965 patent for his “underwater manipulator with suction support device.” He helped make Shell Oil a leader in offshore technology.

As the search for oil reached deeper into the ocean’s depths, traditional hard hat diving technology advanced to keep up. The advent of saturation diving and helium/oxygen mixtures extended depths and diving times.

Deep Wells Offshore

Saturation diving technologies helped reduce the dangers of decompression sickness — “the bends” — but there were limits to what divers could accomplish in increasingly hazardous depths (learn more in Deep Sea Roughnecks).

Shell Oil Company took the lead in transforming Hughes’ Mobot design into what would become known as ROVs. Beginning in 1960, a series of patents described “a remotely controlled manipulator device for carrying out operations underwater at an assembly position at the top of a well.”

Patents by Howard Shatto Jr. — named to the Oilfield Energy Center’s Industry Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2000 — and others made Shell Oil Company the early leader in offshore development. Shatto explained how an underwater device patented in January 1965 particularly related to the offshore petroleum industry:

“A recent development at offshore locations is the installation of a large amount of underwater equipment used in producing oil fields and gas fields situated many miles from shore,” Shatto noted, adding, “Many of the wells are being drilled in water up to 600 feet deep, a depth greater than divers can safely work.” 

Howard L. Shatto Jr. (1924-2018) became known as “the father of dynamic positioning,” according to the Marine Technology Society.

The inventor added that a primary objective of his design is to provide a “manipulator device” with articulated arms that can secure itself to a wellhead on the ocean floor. “Each of the arms is provided at its outer end with a suitable suction means in the form of a suction cup,” he explained.

Swimming Socket Wrench

Shatto led in designing of the first subsea wellheads using an ROV, noted the Oilfield Energy Center in 2000. He also conceived automatic controls for dynamic positioning (DP) of a vessel that “controlled surge, sway, and yaw independently and resolved thruster commands.

A Yale graduate, Shatto developed ROVs for the first subsea BOP and created the world’s first automatic DP control for Shell’s Eureka core drillship in 1960, according to the Marine Technology Society.

 In 1970, Shatto made industry history with the world’s first DP oil exploration riser-equipped drillship. “Since then, more than 4,000 DP systems have been built worldwide using Mr. Shatto’s initial concepts,” noted Drilling Contractor magazine in 2018 after Shatto, chairman emeritus of the Dynamic Positioning Committee of the Marine Technology Society, died on January 21.

“Known as the father of Dynamic Positioning, Howard Shatto’s contributions to the offshore oil and gas industry and the marine industry as a whole go well beyond DP,” added the Dynamic Positioning Committee.

Making a Mobot

When Hughes Aircraft built the first marine Mobot for Shell Oil, the company adapted sonar and television cameras for navigation, propellers for propulsion, and an umbilical cable for control. With a mechanical arm, the offshore robot could turn bolts, operate valves and attach control hoses and guidelines.

“This mechanical robot has been developed to assist in drilling and completing offshore wells,” noted Shell Oil Company of its new technology that could swim, see, and hear. Photo courtesy National Museum of American History, American Petroleum Institute Collection 1860s-1980s, Archives Center.

“It was basically a swimming socket wrench,” said a Shell engineer, describing the 14-foot, 7,000-pound underwater Mobot. Because of the necessity to pay traditional divers to rescue a clumsy, often entangled offshore robot, early models also became known as “a diver’s best friend.”

A Shell Oil Company Mobot photograph is preserved in the American Petroleum Institute Collection 1860s-1980s, at the National Museum of American History, Archives Center. “This mechanical robot was developed to assist in drilling and completing offshore wells,” notes the undated caption. “The device uses television and sonar to locate wellheads, has a gyrocompass for directional sense, and swims in the water with propellers on either side. Its main tool, a socket wrench, can be replaced with a claw for holding various types of equipment.”

The first job of a revolutionary offshore “mechanical robot” was to complete a well off the coast of California, according to Meccano Magazine, February 1963, page 49.

Shell Oil successfully used a Mobot on a wildcat well in 250 feet of water off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, in October 1962. “It can swim, see, hear and has a ‘nose’ that turn screws, work valves, and grip pipes and hoses,” noted the editor of Meccano Magazine in February 1963, page 49. “It can also wield a wire brush and other tools,” added the editor.

Over the next 10 years, increasingly advanced Mobots worked at dozens of offshore wells, operating to depths of 1,000 feet for extended periods. As exploratory wells continued to be drilled deeper, the technology revolutionized the offshore industry worldwide. 

Military Subsea Technology

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy developed its own deep-sea technology for both submarine rescue and antisubmarine purposes. In 1963, the nuclear attack submarine USS Thresher sank with the loss of all hands 220 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass.

The only vehicle capable of reaching a depth of 8,400 feet was the Navy’s manned bathyscaph Trieste, which found and photographed the wreckage. Unfortunately, Trieste had little capability to retrieve objects.

The Navy’s CURV I (Cable-Controlled Underwater Recovery Vehicle) recovers a lost nuclear bomb from the Mediterranean in 1966 near Palomares, Spain.

On January 17, 1966, near the coast of Spain, a U.S. Air Force B-52 collided with its refueling tanker, scattering debris and four 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs over the Spanish coast. Three of the nuclear bombs were recovered on land, but the fourth was lost in the Mediterranean Sea.

With a combination of divers and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s manned submersible, Alvin, the missing atomic bomb was located at a depth of 2,850 feet. To retrieve it, the Navy employed its new CURV I (Cable-Controlled Underwater Recovery Vehicle), which snagged the bomb and pulled it to the surface.

“It was located and fished up by the most fabulous array of underwater machines ever assembled,” proclaimed Popular Science magazine. During the Cold War, the Navy developed deep-sea technologies that the offshore petroleum industry would adopt and continue to advance.

Worldwide publicity briefly elevated the visibility of marine robotics, but the technology has mostly remained submerged in military, scientific, and offshore oil and natural gas applications.

Secrets of the Titanic

In 1982, Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute — and a former naval intelligence officer — approached the Navy as a possible source of funding to find the wreck of the Titanic.

In 1986, Robert Ballard brought the manned submersible Alvin, above, to the wreck of the Titanic. He also utilized an ROV — a fiber optic “tethered eyeball.”

The Navy was more interested in developing Ballard’s fiber optic video system for deep-sea surveys and the potential to examine debris fields of two nuclear submarines, USS Thresher (lost April 10, 1963) and USS Scorpion (lost May 22, 1968).

With Navy support, the oceanographer’s highly classified mission was presented to the public as only “a search for Titanic.” Ballard used the Argo, a towed undersea video camera sled, to survey and photograph both submarine wrecks, yielding invaluable data to his covert government sponsors.

Completing the secret mission’s objectives with 12 days to spare, Ballard’s team used Argo to find the Titanic on September 1, 1985, and received worldwide acclaim. For 73 years Titanic had remained hidden at a depth of 12,460 feet. One year later, Ballard brought another Woods Hole veteran, deep-diving manned submersible Alvin, to the Titanic. 

Then, for the first time, the public was able to see deeper into Titanic’s ghostly decks through the fiber optic eyes of the ROV Jason Jr.  Later joined by another unmanned submersible, the Hercules, the two highly sophisticated ROVs brought undersea technology to prime-time television.

Offshore Production

While such “Eyeball Class” ROVs were well suited for marine archeology, observation, and inspection, the demands of deep offshore oil production required development of heavy “Work Class” ROVs that could be equipped with a variety of tools.

Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are most widely used by the offshore petroleum industry. Photo courtesy Oceaneering International.

Today, such an offshore robot can weigh ten thousand pounds, lift over one thousand, and operate at 10,000-foot depths. The petroleum industry is the principal user of this class of ROV. Further offshore exploration is prompting yet a new generation of marine robotics – the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which abandons the use of a physical cable connection to the mother ship.

Fiber optics link data from a 6,750-pound vehicle. Image courtesy Ocean Engineering.

Defined as “a crewless, non-tethered submersible which operates independent of direct human control,” AUVs make detailed maps of seabed topography and hazards that could impact proposed oil and natural gas offshore infrastructure.

Advanced AUVs continue to be an emerging offshore technology that began with Howard Hughes’ simple Mobot at the dawn of the nuclear age (also see Petroleum Survey finds U-166).

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Recommended Reading: The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2009); Diving & ROV: Commercial Diving offshore (2021); Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “ROV – Swimming Socket Wrench.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/offshore-robot. Last Updated: January 16, 2026. Original Published Date: January 13, 2011.

The post ROV – Swimming Socket Wrench appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

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.

“Stabbing in,” once a deadly hazard for offshore divers, has been replaced with technologies like remotely operated vehicles. Painting by Clyde Olcott from the 2007 book, “The History of Oilfield Diving: An Industrial Adventure,” by Christopher Swann.

The pursuit of offshore oil demanded technological innovation as exploration led to deeper and more inhospitable waters. Offshore divers faced new challenges, including one hazard called “stabbing in” a drill bit at the well.

“Because re-inserting a drill pipe from a moving, heaving barge into the subsea wellhead was a difficult maneuver, each time a worn bit had to be replaced, a diver had to be called,” noted Underwater magazine in a May 2000 article. “The hard-hat diver effected the ‘stab-in’ by straddling the top of the 24-inch hole between his legs, physically pulling the drill string over the target and at just the right moment instructing the drill floor, 250 feet overhead, to ‘let go.’”

Modern deep sea roughneck technology spares divers this dangerous task, reported Christopher Swann, author of The History of Oilfield Diving, published in 2007. Instead of air, divers began breathing mixtures of helium and oxygen during deep descents and carefully managed decompression ascents.

Swann’s 2007 book includes a painting by Clyde Olcott showing a diver guiding a drill pipe into the wellhead — “stabbing in.”

As an illustrator of pioneering underwater operations, Olcott (1927 – 2009) produced accurate images of commercial divers at work. His artwork documented diving technologies, beginning in the late 1950s at Santa Barbara, California, including oxygen-helium diving.

With many diving companies originating on the U.S. West Coast, Olcott’s illustrations have appeared worldwide in technical manuals, advertisements, company brochures — and as art on boardroom walls. His artwork for company presentations often introduced new offshore diving concepts, according to Leslie Leaney, a past president of the Historical Divers Society.

“When future historians want to review what was happening underwater during the pioneering days of oilfield diving, Clyde’s paintings will be ‘the picture that is worth a thousand words’,” Leaney noted in the Spring 2009 issue of the Journal of Diving History.

Saturation diving and decompression chambers were developed by the offshore industry to further increase bottom times and improve safety. With deep saturation diving, every 100 feet of depth required 24 hours of decompression and like today, time was money.

The extreme cold of deep water prompted Taylor Diving & Salvage of Belle Chasse, Louisiana, to adapt space suits designed for NASA astronaut John Glenn to deep sea diving. Hot water was pumped down from the surface and through dive-suit tubing extended bottom times.

Deep sea diving companies adapted space suits designed for astronaut John Glenn in Friendship 7 capsule. Photo courtesy NASA.

Taylor also developed an underwater welding habitat pressurized with nitrogen that greatly facilitated the critical business of laying pipeline, tie-ins and repairs.

In 1948, Shell Oil Company and others pioneered the use of underwater television cameras for survey, inspection, and repair work. The Navy also developed deep sea technologies for submarine rescue. Technologies for underwater robots began to evolve.

The first job of Shell Oil’s camera-equipped Mobot was to complete a well off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, according to Meccano Magazine (February 1963, page 49).

By the early 1960s, Hughes Aircraft Company had built the first marine “Manipulator Operated Robot” — MOBOT — for Shell Oil Company.

The underwater robot used sonar and television cameras for navigation, propellers for propulsion, and an umbilical cable for control. For more about MOBOT (see ROV – Swimming Socket Wrench). Despite state-of-the-art robotics, the offshore petroleum industry continued to need manned deep sea diving.

Diving technologies evolved to meet petroleum industry needs as drilling depths increased in the 1960s.

At Hughes Aircraft in the 1960s, cryogenics engineer Ken Cowen analyzed heat domes of missiles traveling at Mach speeds before establishing the offshore technology company Kinergetics Inc. with NASA astronaut-turned-aquanaut Scott Carpenter.

Cowans’ wife JoAnn painted award-winning landscapes of Southern California oilfields (see Petroleum & Oilfield Artists), as he designed and patented sub-sea products, including diving safety equipment like the Stranded Bell Diver Survival System.

Early Technologies and CUSS

Along California’s coastline, the need for divers (man or mechanical) had begun as petroleum exploration followed known oilfields offshore. Drilling contractors developed special platforms and constructed drilling piers, but productive fields extended into Pacific Ocean depths far from the shoreline.

Until remotely operating devices were invented, drilling in depths of 200 feet and beyond required the endurance and capabilities of experienced hard-hat divers.

The dangers of deep sea diving prompted Harry Houdini to patent his 1921 invention of a quick-release mechanism to help divers exit the cumbersome suits.

Production methods and equipment would demand new technologies invented by offshore pioneers — including a diver’s suit patented by escape artist Harry Houdini.

In the early days of West Coast petroleum exploration, Albacore divers found new opportunities around numerous California oil seeps, especially at Santa Barbara. The geologic region there has remained active because of the movement of the San Andreas and other faults. The numerous oil seeps led to discovery of the Los Angeles City oilfield in 1892.

Faced with developing new and expensive offshore technologies, in 1948, Continental Oil Company (today’s Conoco-Phillips) partnered with Union Oil, Shell Oil and Superior Oil in a joint venture – using company initials to form the CUSS Group. 

The CUSS objective was to pursue deep-water drilling and for the first time develop motion-restricted drilling ships. Experiments began with  Submarex, a modified U.S. Navy submarine chaser, followed in 1956 by the CUSS I, a converted World War II barge 260 feet long with a 48-foot beam.

CUSS I pioneered the use of underwater television cameras to assist in survey, inspection and repair work. In 1965, the vessel drilled a well in 635 feet of water, setting and cementing multiple strings of casing without using divers. But most offshore petroleum work still required the skills of traditional hard-hat divers.

Highly advanced at the time, CUSS I used four steering propellers and six mooring buoys to hold the ship in position. During this same period, the U.S. Navy was developing its own deep sea technology for both submarine rescue and Cold War antisubmarine purposes.

Tethered to a mother ship by umbilical cables, remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) in 1963 helped find the nuclear attack submarine USS Thresher, which had sunk with all hands during deep a diving test. The recovery vessel included a 95-foot derrick amidships over a diamond-shaped sea opening, still known today as a “moon pool.”

Offshore Engineering

Tapping into the prolific oilfields that extended offshore from popular California beaches brought strict state regulations.

“With leasing from the state of California to explore and produce oil and gas, well control and the ability to run multiple strings of casing became mandatory and required a totally new, unproven technology,” explained the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in a 1987 study.

Built in 1956 by a partnership of four companies, Continental, Union, Shell, and Superior, the offshore drilling vessel CUSS 1 was a converted World War II barge.

“The first floating drilling rig to use subsea well control was the Western Explorer owned by Chevron, which spudded its first well in 1955 in the Santa Barbara Channel,” the society noted.

Other offshore drilling rigs and production platform innovations followed. Petroleum engineers developed technologies to allow deep drilling in the roughest weather. But even with advanced undersea robotics, the petroleum industry has continued to rely on manned diving.

Modern atmospheric diving systems enclose the operator at one-atmosphere pressure, regardless of depth, thereby eliminating the necessity for decompression.

The modern deep sea “Hardsuit 2000” includes 16 rotary joints and two thrusters for mobility.

The “Hardsuit 2000” with 16 rotary joints and two thrusters for mobility, bears little resemblance to its traditional hard-hat ancestors. The suit can operate at depths up to 2,000 feet and remain for six hours on the bottom with no decompression required.

Women Pioneers

As the offshore petroleum industry continued to expand worldwide, it needed all the skilled workers it could find — of any gender. Journalist and professional landman Rebecca Ponton in 2019 published a collection of personal accounts from women who challenged oil industry stereotypes.

Ponton interviewed a diverse collection of energy professionals for Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry, preserving the underrecognized accomplishments of “WOW — Women on Water,” her introductory chapter’s title.

Among the stories are the experiences of an offshore helicopter pilot, logistics superintendent, photographer, federal agency director, and mechanical and chemical engineers. Among her sources, Ponton interviewed Marni Zabarski, who in 2001 became the first female saturation diver in the Gulf of Mexico.

Offshore safety pioneer Margaret McMillan in the late 1980s helped establish the Marine Survival Training Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 2004, McMillan was the first woman to be inducted into the Houston-based Oilfield Energy Center’s Hall of Fame.

Pursuit of U.S. offshore oil and natural gas has continued to generate advanced technologies. Innovators and underwater oil patch roughnecks continue to push both science and offshore industry to new, deeper frontiers.

By 2011, more than 4,500 offshore petroleum platforms supplied 25 percent of the United States’ production of natural gas and 10 percent of its oil. An industry-government partnership has used offshore structures no longer producing to form the world’s largest artificial reef complex (see Rigs to Reefs).

Learn more about the evolution of offshore exploration and production technologies in Offshore Petroleum History.

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Recommended Reading: Diving & ROV: Commercial Diving offshore (2021); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019); The History of Oilfield Diving: An Industrial Adventure (2007); The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2009); Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Deep Sea Roughnecks.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/deep-sea-roughnecks. Last Updated: January 15, 2026. Original Published Date: January 13, 2011.

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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.

Although never built, Thomas Rowland’s 1869 design for an offshore platform was far ahead of its time.

By 1897 this first offshore well was producing oil and 22 companies soon joined in the boom, constructing 14 more piers and over 400 wells within the next five years. The Summerland offshore field produced for 25 years — fueling the growth of California’s economy.

Piers and Platforms

In 1894, Henry Williams drilled two wells on a California beach. He drilled another in 1895 with encouraging results. This led Williams and others to exploring for oil offshore the next year. They constructed piers and drilled wells, leading to the realization that the Summerland oilfield extended offshore. This would be the first offshore field developed in the nation by drilling offshore wells from piers. – From Santa Barbara County records

In 1911, Gulf Refining Company abandoned the use of piers. It drilled Ferry Lake No. 1 on Caddo Lake, Louisiana, using a fleet of tugboats, barges, and floating pile drivers. When the well came in at 450 barrels per day, Gulf constructed platforms every 600 feet on each 10-acre lakebed site.

The Caddo Lake wells — completed over water without a pier connection to shore — have frequently been called America’s first true offshore drilling.

Cable-tool derricks on Louisiana’s Caddo Lake, circa 1911.

A petroleum company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, drilled one of the first “over water” oil wells in 1911, according to Bob Bowman of the East Texas Historical Association. “In the early 1900s, 27-year-old Walter B. Pyron, of Blossom, Texas, a production foreman for Guffy Oil Company, noticed gas bubbles rising from Caddo Lake,” Bowman explained in 2006. “He and other Guffy employees rowed across the lake, lighting strings of the bubbles.”

“In early May 1911, after months of hard work and battles with mosquitoes, alligators and moccasins, the Ferry Lake No. 1 was drilled to a depth of 2,185 and began producing 450 barrels of oil a day,” reported Bowman. Pyron convinced his superiors at Gulf Oil Corporation — the successor of Guffy Petroleum Company — to drill on the lake.

Rigs on an Ohio Lake

Ohio oil documents record hundreds of oil wells pumping far out into a lake — 20 years before drillers ventured into the waters of Louisiana’s Caddo Lake.

Derricks on Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio, circa 1890s. Photograph courtesy of Joyce L. Alig, from the Mercer County Historical Society, Celina, Ohio.

As early as 1891, the first submerged oil wells were drilled from platforms built on piles in Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio, notes historian Judith L. Sneed in “The First Over Water Drilling: The Lost History Of Ohio’s Grand Reservoir Oil Boom.” Learn more in Ohio Offshore Wells.

Even earlier, some historians say the true beginning of the modern offshore industry can be traced to an 1869 U.S. patent. Thomas Fitch Rowland of Greenpoint, New York, patented a “submarine drilling apparatus” on May 4, 1869.

Rowland’s design (see An 1869 Offshore Rig Patent) included a fixed, working platform for drilling offshore to a depth of almost 50 feet. The anchored, four-legged tower — with telescoping legs “suitable hydraulic attachments or devices” — resembles modern offshore platforms.

Fixed platforms (1 and 2), compliant tower (3), vertically moored tension leg and mini-tension leg platforms (4, 5), spar (6), semisubmersibles (7, 8), floating production, storage and offloading (9), sub-sea completion and tie-back to host facility (10). Illustration courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Gulf of Mexico Technologies

Secretary of War Harry Woodring in July 1947 approved a plan to build a one-mile pier into the Gulf of Mexico to explore for oil. Woodring approved drilling by the Humble Oil and Refining Company near McFadden Beach at Port Arthur, Texas.

Humble Oil built the experimental pier on a 60-acre lease eight miles east of High Island in Galveston County and drilled with three rigs, but found no oil before a hurricane destroyed the pier.

In 1938, Pure Oil and Superior Oil Company built a freestanding drilling platform in the Gulf — despite logistics, engineering, and communications challenges.

The company hired the Houston engineering and construction company Brown & Root Marine Operators to build a 320-foot by 180-foot freestanding wooden deck in 14 feet of water about a mile offshore. The drilling site selected was near Creole, Louisiana.

Using onshore building criteria and intuition, the Creole platform was designed to withstand winds of 150 mph and constructed 15 feet above the water. Three hundred treated yellow pine pilings were driven 14 feet into the sandy bottom. 

Onshore salt domes were recorded as early as 1890 by the Geological Survey of Texas.

The Superior-Pure State No. 1 well was successful – but was wiped off its pilings by a hurricane in 1940. The platform was quickly rebuilt and put back into production in the four million barrel field. “It may be tentatively assumed that the Gulf of Mexico is a potential source of salt-dome oil,” reported geologist Orval Lester Brace in 1941.

“Whether or not it will ever be economically feasible to explore these waters for the domes that must exist is a question for the future to answer,” Brace added. Salt dome geologic formations had attracted petroleum companies since the 1901 Spindletop discovery at Beaumont, Texas. 

Kerr-McGee dramatically answered the salt dome question in 1947 with an experimental offshore rig.

Not much equipment specifically designed for offshore drilling existed and exploration remained an extraordinarily speculative and risky business venture. An offshore dry hole could easily end with huge capital costs sunk into construction of large, permanent rig platforms.

This Kerr-McGee drilling platform, known as Kermac Rig No. 16, was the first offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was out of sight of land. Photo courtesy New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Nevertheless, Dean McGee of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries Inc. partnered with Phillips Petroleum and Stanolind Oil & Gas Co. to secure leases for exploratory wells in the Gulf of Mexico. They hired Brown & Root to build a freestanding platform 10 miles out to sea.

Kerr-McGee’s Kermac No. 16

“We decided to explore the areas where the really potential prolific production might be — salt domes — the good ones on land were gone, but we could move out in the shallow water and, in effect, get into a virgin area where we could find the real class-one type salt dome prospect,” McGee said.

Vessels were needed to provide supplies, equipment, and crew quarters for the drilling site, 43 miles southwest of Morgan City, Louisiana. The gradually sloping Gulf of Mexico reached only about 18 feet deep at the drilling site.

Offshore platforms attract and significantly increase numbers and species of fish. By the 1990s, 75 percent of recreational fishing trips off Louisiana visited one or more rig sites. Photo courtesy Pensacola Fishing Forum.

A second platform would be built about eight miles from the first at Ship Shoal Block 28. Sixteen 24-inch pilings were sunk 104 feet into the ocean floor to secure a 2,700-square-foot wooden deck.

The Kermac No. 16 well stood in almost 20 feet of water, 10 miles at sea. Drilling began on September 10, 1947, and the biggest hurricane of the season arrived a week later, with winds of 140 mph. Kerr-McGee had $450,000 invested in the project.

Both platforms were evacuated during the hurricane, but damage was minimal. Drilling promptly resumed. On November 14, the Kermac No. 16 well began producing 40 barrels of oil per hour.

“Spectacular Gulf of Mexico Discovery. Possible 100-Million Barrel Field – 10 Miles at Sea,” proclaimed the Oil & Gas Journal. Kermac No.16 would produce 1.4 million barrels of oil and 307 million cubic feet of natural gas by 1984.

Mr. Charlie

By the end of 1949, 11 oil and natural gas fields were found in the Gulf of Mexico with 44 exploratory wells as rapid expansion of offshore exploration continued. 

Capable of drilling wells in water up to 40 feet in depth, Mr. Charlie in 1954 became the first mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU). Photos courtesy Murphy Oil Corp.

By June 1954, a revolutionary mobile platform concept was launched from Kermac No. 16’s shipyard in Louisiana. The design and technologies of the semisubmersible rig Mr. Charlie later would be declared a mechanical engineering landmark. Learn more in Mr. Charlie, First Mobile Offshore Drilling Rig.

Also in 1954, a contract for the first jack-up oil rig was signed by Houston-based Zapata Oil, led by future U.S. President George H.W. Bush. The inventor, R.G. LeTourneau, had designed an all-weather drilling platform that could be easily converted to a stable structure by lowering legs on two sides and one end of the hull.

“The LeTourneau Mobile Offshore Platform was basically a large, shallow-draft barge, equipped with three electromechanically operated lattice type legs,” explained a 2005 article in Drilling Contractor magazine. LeTourneau’s first jackup, Scorpion, was launched in 1955 from a Vicksburg shipyard on the Mississippi River.

Offshore Records

Today’s offshore energy industry benefits come from the hard lessons learned from of open water experience, according to the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA). Compared to the limits of the early technology, “achievements will no doubt pale in comparison to what the future of offshore exploration will bring.”

The “Troll A” natural gas platform operated by Statoil. In 1996, it was “the largest object ever to be moved by man across the surface of the Earth.” Photo courtesy Amusing Planet.

Federal revenue generated from the production of oil became second only to the nation’s income taxes. But deeper wells mean higher costs — and far greater technical challenges.

The National Ocean Industries Association notes: “As the industry entered the last decade of the 20th century, advancing technology ensued. New depth records for drilling reached 7,625 feet in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Bell Helicopters formed Petroleum Bell Helicopters Company, which ran this ad in U.S. News and World Report on November 12, 1954.

In the North Sea, the Troll A  natural gas platform stands in the North Sea in 1,000 feet of water and is 1,500 feet high. According to a March 2013 article posted at Amusing Planet, in 1996 the platform set the Guinness World Record for largest offshore gas platform. “The title now belongs to the Petronius Platform in the Gulf of Mexico, which stands 2,000 feet above the ocean floor.”

A flat area on an LST — from World War II “landing ship, tanks” — anchored next to Humble Rig 28 served as landing pad for one of the first helicopters to be flown offshore. Helicopters would become a common way for getting crews to and from remote platforms. The first use of helicopters offshore came at the request of Kerr-McGee and Humble Oil.

Joining offshore supply vessels, two-seat helicopters — already used by seismograph companies for searching coastal marshes — began visiting offshore rigs. Petroleum-Bell Helicopters in early 1949 formed Petroleum-Bell Helicopters, known as “Pet Bell,” according to the verticalmag.com 2019 article, “Vertical Rewind Helicopters in the Gulf: Humble Beginnings.” A

A 1954 advertisement featuring a two-seat Bell 47D-1 helicopter operated by Bell Aircraft’s oil exploration division of Louisiana in 1949 is preserved at the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum.

Fish Habitats

The heavy components of an offshore rig, sometimes assembled at the rig’s destination, have a further use. Scientists have studied new roles for petroleum platforms as artificial marine habitats.

Whether placed as an artificial reef or a working (producing petroleum) structure, state and federal investigations have found that rigs increase the algae and invertebrates that attract and significantly increase numbers and species of fish. In 2021, about 3,500 petroleum-related structures stood in the Gulf of Mexico, creating the largest artificial reef system in the world. 

For more about a federal program to convert petroleum platforms into undersea nature reserves, (see Rigs to Reefs and other offshore history articles Deep Sea Roughnecks and ROV — Swimming Socket Wrench, a history of remotely operated undersea vehicles).

Big Fin Squid

On November 11, 2007, a mile and a half underwater, a petroleum company’s remote control submersible camera captured a rarely seen Magnapinna squid.

A platform’s ROV photographed a “big fin” squid 1.5 miles underwater.

The video obtained by National Geographic News shows the alien-like squid loiter above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico. The clip — from Shell Oil Company’s Perdido production site — marks the first sighting of a Magnapinna or “big fin” squid near oil development. Marine biologists now partner with petroleum companies.

Offshore Oil and Gas Resources

Gulf of Mexico oil production reached record levels in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of total U.S. oil production; federal offshore natural gas production in the Gulf accounted for 5 percent. More than 47 percent of U.S. refining capacity is located along the Gulf Coast.

From 1980 to 1999, about 7.4 billion barrels of oil were produced in all federal waters. Of that production, less than a thousandth of one percent spilled — lower than the natural seepages of oil from the sea floor, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, more than 60 percent of all oil found in seawater is not from wells, but from natural seepage (the largest emitting 1,000 barrels of oil a week); 32 percent comes from shipping and run-off from land. Four percent can be attributed to tanker spills.

To meet increasing U.S. demand while addressing environmental concerns, new technologies have led to drilling rigs capable of drilling 250 miles offshore to ocean depths exceeding 10,000 feet.

Offshore Federal production in fiscal year 2020 reached about 641 million barrels of oil and 882 billion cubic feet of gas, “almost all of which was produced in the Gulf of Mexico, accounting for about 15 percent of U.S. oil production and two percent of domestic natural gas production, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

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Recommended Reading: Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (2011); U.S. Geological Survey; The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2009); Women of the Offshore Petroleum Industry tell Their Stories (2019). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information: Article Title – “Offshore Petroleum History.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL:https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/offshore-oil-history. Last Updated: November 10, 2025. Original Published Date: January 10, 2010.

The post Offshore Petroleum History appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

During World War II, U-boats prowled the Gulf of Mexico to disrupt the flow of oil carried by tankers departing ports in Louisiana and Texas. Sixty years later, seabed surveys found U-166 — and its last victim.

Petroleum exploration and production companies operating in the U.S. outer continental shelf (OCS) typically provide government scientists with sonar data for areas with potential archaeological value.

A 2001 archaeological survey by BP and Shell before construction of a natural gas pipeline confirmed discovery of U-166 about 45 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Federal agencies review oil and natural gas-related surveys, and over the years the data have revealed more than 100 historic shipwrecks in U.S. OCS waters. In 2001, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) the noted that “a German submarine definitely got our attention.”

MMS in 2011 became the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), which maintains offshore maps and statistics, including petroleum production.

U-Boat Scourge

In the months following America’s entering the war in 1941, Germany’s Kriegsmarine sank 56 Allied ships, including 17 tankers, while losing only one submarine, U-boat 166. Attacks extended from the East Coast to key ports in Texas and Louisiana.

Submarine attacks so threatened the war effort that the U.S. government and the petroleum industry launched the longest pipeline project ever undertaken. A joint project led to building the “Big Inch” and “Little Big Inch” from East Texas to Illinois and New York (see WW II Big Inch and Little Big Inch Pipelines).

But for the Nazi submarine U-166, the war was over. Its final resting place remained a mystery for almost six decades.

Commissioned on March 23, 1942, U-166 today is a war grave in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy National World War II Museum.

The last victim of the U-166 was the passenger freighter Robert E. Lee, sunk by a single torpedo on July 30, 1942, while on its way to New Orleans. Her Naval escort ship, PC-566, rushed in to drop ten depth charges. The U-166 was believed to have escaped. It did not.

Finding U-166

In 1986, a Shell Offshore vessel using a deep-tow system of the day recorded two close wrecks about 45 miles off the Louisiana coast in 5,000 feet of water. The identity of the vessels would surprise military historians.

At first thought to be the Robert E. Lee and cargo freighter Alcoa Puritan, it was May 2001 before an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) using side scan sonar revealed the U-166. The lost World War II submarine was separated from Robert E. Lee by less than a mile on the sea floor.

The AUV, which required no cable connection to its mother ship, found the Alcoa Puritan 14 miles away. Learn more about the petroleum industry’s offshore robotics in ROV – Swimming Socket Wrench.

The U.S. petroleum industry remains a principal user of advanced underwater technologies for seafloor mapping. Illustration courtesy BOEM.

Six other World War II vessels have been discovered in the course of Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas surveys.

As a result of the U-166’s discovery, BP and Shell altered their proposed pipeline to preserve the site and government archaeologists notified the U.S. Navy Historical Center of the discovery.

“They, in turn, notified the German Embassy and military attaché,” the MMS article explains. “Since the remains of the U-166’s 52 crewmen are still on board, the German government has declared the site to be a war grave and has requested that it remain undisturbed.”

Managing Offshore Oil

In early 2024, BOEM managed more than 2,410 active oil and natural gas leases on about 13 million OCS acres.

“Offshore federal production in 2020 reached approximately 641 million barrels of oil and 882 billion cubic feet of gas, almost all of which was produced in the Gulf of Mexico,” the agency noted. “This accounts for about 15 percent of all domestic oil production and 2 percent of domestic natural gas production.”

The Kerr-McGee drilling platform Kermac Rig No. 16 in 1947 became the first offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico that operated out of sight of land. The Gulf’s offshore industry would discover 11 oil and natural gas fields by the end of 1949. Learn more in Offshore Oil History; also see Women of the Offshore Petroleum Industry.

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Recommended Reading:  Torpedoes in the Gulf: Galveston and the U-Boats, 1942-1943 (1995); Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Petroleum Survey discovers U-boat.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/petroleum-in-war/petroleum-survey-finds-u-166. Last Updated: July 27, 2025. Original Published Date: April 18, 2012.

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By 1897, Henry Williams had successfully pursued the giant Summerland, California, oilfield to the scenic cliffside beaches of Santa Barbara.

California Oil Piers

With reports of “tar balls” on the beaches from natural offshore oil seeps, Williams recognized that the highly productive field extended into the Pacific Ocean. He and his associates constructed a 300-foot pier, mounted a cable-tool derrick, and began drilling.

A circa 1920 view of Santa Barbara, California, beaches. “Pumping oil out of the Pacific Ocean at Summerland (oilfield)” photo courtesy Library of Congress.

When California’s first offshore oil well proved successful, more than 20 petroleum companies rushed to Santa Barbara. They constructed 14 more piers, the longest extending 1,230 feet.

Over the next five years more than 400 Summerland wells were completed as offshore and onshore drilling technologies continued to advance.

Around 1920 an unknown photographer documented “oil well derricks on the beach and in the ocean,” according to the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. At the time, only a few of the historic pier wells were still active. Onshore and offshore, the Summerland oilfield would produce until 1940 and yielded more than three million of barrels of oil.

Today, Lookout Park stands over Santa Barbara beaches that annually host thousands of swimmers instead of oil piers. A park plaque commemorates the state’s early offshore petroleum pioneers as “the first offshore oil production on the western hemisphere.”

However, two other petroleum-producing states claim a similar accomplishment in production technologies.

Derricks over Lakes

“The world’s first over water oil well was completed in Caddo Lake in 1911,” proclaims a historical marker at the lake northeast of Shreveport, Louisiana. Built over water without a pier connection to shore, Gulf Refining Company’s Ferry Lake No.1 well “bottomed at 2,185 and produced  450 barrels per day,” explains the marker, erected by Gulf Oil in 1984.

A historical marker at Caddo Lake, Louisiana, erroneously claims oil wells drilled in 1911 were “the world’s first over water.” Photo courtesy Louisiana DNR.

“It has long been touted as the location of the world’s first over water oil well,” notes historian Judith Sneed of Mooringsport, Louisiana. “This accolade, however, is not correct. Stand alone oil wells produced commercial quantities of oil over a small lake in Ohio as early as 1891,” she explains. Ohio historians have documented hundreds of 1890s oil wells pumping on Grand Lake St. Marys in Mercer and Auglaize counties.

For drilling over water, enterprising oil companies constructed 14-foot-square “cribs” to support cable-tool derricks, steam engines and boilers. Pipelines carried the oil to shore from these “first” offshore wells (see Ohio Offshore Wells).

Out of Sight of Land

The pursuit of offshore oil reached another milestone in 1947. Searching for new reserves, Kerr-McGee Oil Industries pioneered offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company built Kermac No. 16 platform ten miles off the Louisiana shoreline – the first successful oil well out of sight of land. This success proved the feasibility of tender-serviced oil platforms at sea and opened a new era of offshore oil exploration and production.

Kermac Rig No. 16 in 1947 drilled the first offshore well out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“Spectacular Gulf of Mexico Discovery. Possible 100-Million Barrel Field – 10 Miles at Sea,” proclaimed the Oil & Gas Journal. The Kermac No.16 well would produce 1.4 million barrels of oil and 307 million cubic feet of natural gas by 1984. Learn more in Offshore Petroleum History and Deep Sea Roughnecks.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information: Article Title – Offshore Oil Piers, Platforms, and Barges.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/california-oil-piers. Last Updated: July 1, 2025. Original Published Date: June 1, 2017.

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The world’s first mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) began in the mind of World War II Navy veteran Alden “Doc” Laborde, who believed a self-sufficient oil rig could be placed on a barge for deeper offshore drilling. Laborde applied his naval experience to design and build the first submersible offshore drilling rig.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in 2012 designated Mr. Charlie an ASME Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. Today, Laborde’s offshore platform is a Louisiana museum and education center, a national historic landmark, and “glimpse into the past” for the offshore petroleum industry. 

As the rig’s museum in Morgan City, Louisiana, explains, “Mr. Charlie’s invention was a major step forward that was widely documented, in an era of intense, active experimentation in the design of mobile rigs capable of drilling in deeper and deeper waters.”  

Drilling Barge

When Mr. Charlie, a moveable, barge drilling platform, left its New Orleans shipyard for the Gulf of Mexico on June 15, 1954, it became the world’s first MODU. As it experimented with operating methods, the self-sufficient Mr. Charlie went to work for Shell Oil Company in a recently discovered oilfield in East Bay, near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Beginning in 1954 and capable of drilling wells in water up to 40 feet in depth, Mr. Charlie was the first mobile offshore drilling platform. Photos courtesy Murphy Oil Corporation.

A reporter from LIFE magazine covered the launch, noting the new “singularly monstrous contraption” could drill “a 12,000-foot hole at a different location every month.”

Mr. Charlie offered an exploration alternative to erecting permanent, pile-supported drilling platforms to be tendered by utility boats. Kerr-McGee pioneered this approach with the Kermac No. 16 in 1947, but Mr. Charlie could drill in water twice as deep and then move to another site (see Offshore Oil Piers, Platforms, and Barges).

Mr. Charlie’s column-stabilized design revolutionized the offshore industry. Photo courtesy LIFE magazine, September 14, 1954.

The vessel was the “first offshore drilling rig that was fully transportable, submersible and self-sufficient, allowing it to drill more than 200 oil and gas wells along the Gulf Coast between 1954 and 1986,” declared the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Previous submersible drilling barges were limited to shallow bayous and estuaries where waters did not exceed 15 feet. Learn more about the Kermac No. 16 and other early petroleum industry technologies in Offshore Petroleum Exploration History.

A 2019 book by journalist and professional landman Rebecca Ponton includes interviews with pioneering offshore women of the industry. Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry offers personal accounts of finding success in the traditionally male-dominated industry (learn more in Women of the Offshore Petroleum Industry).

Alden “Doc” Laborde

Using ideas that dated back to a 1928 patent by Louis Giliasso and updated in 1952 by John Hayward, the new design came from a young U.S. Navy World War II veteran and marine engineer who had recently joined the offshore industry. Alden “Doc” Laborde, a 1938 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former Lt. Commander, believed a self-sufficient oil rig could be placed on a barge and floated in deeper offshore waters for drilling wells 

However, Laborde struggled to find petroleum companies in Morgan City, Louisiana, willing to risk investing in his concept. Even the company where he worked as a drilling superintendent, Kerr-McKee, a leading offshore innovator in barge drilling, turned him down.

Laborde’s boss thought the idea “looked good on paper,” but told him, “There are too many unknowns. You have ocean currents, shifting bottoms, hurricanes and many other factors that just would not allow this idea to work as planned.”

Mr. Charlie demonstrated the viability of a floating, portable oil rig with a submersible barge to reach previously untapped oilfields.

The new offshore exploration concept was revolutionary — too much so for all the major companies involved in the oil and natural gas industry, ASME noted in its 2012 History and Heritage Landmarks Program. The society has recognized hundreds of sites and collections of historic importance to mechanical engineering.

“Construction on Mr. Charlie began in 1952 at Alexander Shipyards in New Orleans and was completed in late 1953. Mr. Charlie would go on to drill hundreds of wells — a cumulative 2.3 million feet up and down the Gulf Coast for Shell Oil, as well as many other oil companies,” explained ASME.

The offshore drilling platform design of Alden “Doc” Laborde (left) was recognized as an engineering landmark in 2012 by Morgan City Mayor Tim Matte and Reginald Vachon of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Photo courtesy ASME.

Fortunately, Laborde found support from veteran oilman Charles Murphy Jr., owner of an independent oil company from El Dorado, Arkansas. Murphy backed construction of the revolutionary vessel, which would be named after Charles Murphy, Sr. The first customer would be Shell Oil Company.

Laborde formed the Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company and contracted with Alexander Shipyard to build Mr. Charlie. A barge 220 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 14 feet deep supported the drilling platform. The platform was 60 feet above the barge. It had space to store equipment, water, and food supplies, and its legs served as a conduit for electric, water and air lines — and had elevator access.

The drilling vessel was the first mobile offshore unit — and a springboard for many new offshore technologies for drilling deeper wells. Described as an “independent island” and nearly totally self-sufficient with a crew of up to 58, Mr. Charlie drilled hundreds of Gulf of Mexico wells for the next 32 years before retiring in 1986.

“By the mid-1980s, offshore drilling activity had moved beyond 40-foot depths, rendering Mr. Charlie ineffective for larger projects,” ASME explained.

“An effort to preserve Mr. Charlie was led by Morgan City oilmen and former workers on the Mr. Charlie. It now serves as an educational museum and training facility,” ASME added.

Mr. Charlie has been preserved on the banks of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River in Morgan City as the International Petroleum Museum and Exposition. 

In 2004, the National Park System Advisory Board for the U.S. Secretary of the Interior first met to consider designating the offshore platform a National Historic Landmark. Thanks to the determination of Virgil Allen, longtime manager of Mr. Charlie, on December 13, 2024, the Secretary of the Interior officially designated Mr. Charlie as a National Historic Landmark, adding the first MODU to the National Register of Historic Places.

“Mr. Charlie is now the fifty-fourth National Historic Landmark in Louisiana, the first in St. Mary Parish, and the first in the country representing the offshore oil and gas industry,” noted  Allen, whose lengthy designation effort included letters of support from the Oil & Gas Historical Society. 

Alden J. “Doc” Laborde — the Naval Academy graduate and World War II veteran who became an offshore petroleum industry pioneer — died on June 6, 2014, at the age of 98. 

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Recommended Reading: Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997); The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2009); A Primer of Offshore Operations (1998); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

_______________________

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Mr. Charlie, First Mobile Offshore Drilling Rig.” Authors: B.A Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/mr-charlie-first-mobile-offshore-drilling-rig. Last Updated: June 5, 2025. Original Published Date: June 20, 2018.

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The origins of the modern offshore oil exploration and production industry must include the 1869 offshore rig patent “Rock Drill” design of a skilled New York engineer. 

On May 4, 1869, Thomas Fitch Rowland, owner of Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, New York, received a U.S. patent for an unusual “submarine drilling apparatus.” His patent (No. 89,794) for a fixed, offshore drilling platform came just 10 years after America’s first commercial oil discovery in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Although it will never be constructed as originally designed, Thomas Rowland’s 1869 offshore platform with its four telescoping legs presaged modern designs.

Although the Rowland offshore rig was designed to operate in water no deeper than 50 feet, its anchored, four-legged (telescoping platform legs) tower resembled early modern platforms, including those drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1947, the first offshore rig drilled out of sight of land, the Kermac Rig No. 16 in the Gulf of Mexico, stood in less than 20 feet of water (see Offshore Petroleum Exploration History). The small platform (38 feet by 71 feet) drilled 10 miles off the coast with tender vessels for equipment and personnel.

Seventy-eight years earlier, Rowland noted in his offshore drilling patent application:

My invention consists first, in novel construction of drill frame, or stand, or, as it may be termed, working-platform, by providing or forming it with telescopic legs made up of tubes and plungers.

The platform’s legs are connected with suitable hydraulic attachments or devices for forcing water into the legs for the proper support of the platform at different elevations, according to the depth of the water, and to adjust the legs or their plungers to a firm bearing on the rock to be drilled.

In October 1861, Rowland’s Continental Iron Works began construction of the soon-famous turreted Union vessel, USS Monitor. Following the Civil War, Continental Iron Works would become a leader in petroleum storage tank design and construction (also see Horace Horton’s Spheres).

Inventor John Ericsson hired Thomas Rowland (1831-1907) to build an “iron-clad battery” for the Union. Patent drawing of USS Monitor courtesy Library of Congress.

Experience with John Ericsson’s ironclad led Rowland to invent special tools, including a “double planer” machine for manufacturing iron turrets, which later led to development of reliable, large-capacity oil storage tanks.

According to the October 1862 issue of Scientific American:

“A double planer designed and patented by Thomas F. Rowland, proprietor of New York’s Continental Iron Works, where the machine was installed. The planer was built during the American Civil War for planing the armored hull and turret plates of United States Navy ironclads, and could plane two edges of a plate simultaneously at any desired bevel, at a rate of 17 feet per minute.”

Pioneering engineer Thomas F. Rowland owned Continental Iron Works, Greenpoint, New York, seen here (note welded tanks), circa 1898. Illustration detail from Morison Suspension Furnaces for Internal Furnace Boilers from a 1912 company pamphlet.

Following the Civil War, Rowland’s company became a pioneer in industrial construction technologies, including gasworks fittings and welding of corrugated boiler furnaces. Continental Iron Works also would manufacture large-diameter gas mains and water pipes.

In recognition of Rowland’s many achievements, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 1882 instituted the “Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize.” The engineering honor has been annually awarded ever since.

Modern offshore platforms include conventional fixed platforms; compliant towers; vertically moored tension legs; spar platforms; semi-submersibles; production, storage, and offloading facilities; and sub-sea completion facilities. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Drilling on Lakes

U.S. petroleum industry offshore wells produced oil from platforms on Caddo Lake, Louisiana, as early as 1911, but Ohioans claim earlier production from a lake in their state. 

Ohio petroleum historian Joyce L. Alig, president of the Mercer County Historical Society, in 2020 published Oil & Gas Boom, Mercer County and Midwest Ohio, an investigation of the very first U.S. offshore wells — on Grand Lake St. Marys in Mercer and Auglaize counties. Her detailed research appeared in a 2005 peer-reviewed article by Judith Sneed, Mooringsport, Louisiana (see Ohio Offshore Wells).

The first submerged oil wells in salt water were drilled in 1896 from piers in a part of the Summerland oilfield that extends under the Santa Barbara Channel in California.

The earliest true offshore wells — completely out of sight from land — would not be drilled until 1947 in the Gulf of Mexico, as technologies advanced after Thomas Rowland’s 1869 offshore “Rock Drill” patent.

Learn more in Offshore Petroleum History.

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Recommended Reading:  Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997); The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2009); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019). Oil & Gas Boom, Mercer County and Midwest Ohio (2020) — see research by Joyce Alig at the Lakefront Improvement Association.  Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Offshore Rig Patent of 1869.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/offshore-history/offshore-rig-patent. Last Updated: April 22, 2025. Original Published Date: April 28, 2014.

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