Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on May 31, 2007
Enterprise and Society 2007 8(2):227-267; doi:10.1093/es/khm027
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Extraction Not Creation: The History of Offshore Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico
Director of Global Studies, C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, 334 Melcher Hall, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-6021
tpriest{at}uh.edu
Offshore development is one of the most important but least analyzed chapters in the history of the petroleum industry, and the Gulf of Mexico is the most explored, drilled, and developed offshore petroleum province in the world. This essay examines offshore oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico, highlighting the importance of access and how the unique geology and geography of the Gulf shaped both access and technology. Interactions between technology, capital, geology, and the political structure of access in the Gulf of Mexico generated a functionally and regionally complex extractive industry that repeatedly resolved the material and economic contradictions of expanding into deeper water. This was not achieved, however, simply through technological miracles or increased mastery over the environment, as industry experts and popular accounts often imply. The industry moved deeper only by more profoundly adapting to the environment, not by transcending its limits. This essay diverges from celebratory narratives about offshore development and from interpretations that emphasize the social construction of the environment. It challenges the storyline of market-driven technology and its miraculous ability to expand and create petroleum abundance in the Gulf.
The author thanks Kenneth Lipartito, Landon Storrs, Joseph Pratt, James Bamberg, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.