The Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum, located in

Galveston Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, is a museum dedicated to the

offshore Offshore may refer to: Science and technology * Offshore (hydrocarbons) * Offshore construction, construction out at sea * Offshore drilling, discovery and development of oil and gas resources which lie underwater through drilling a well * Off ...

oil and gas industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest ...

. Located next to the

Strand National Historic Landmark District The Strand Historic District, also known as the Strand District, in downtown Galveston, Texas (USA), is a National Historic Landmark District of mainly Victorian era buildings that now house restaurants, antique stores, and curio shops. The area ...

, the museum is housed on a retired

jack-up rig A jackup rig or a self-elevating unit is a type of mobile platform that consists of a buoyant Hull (watercraft), hull fitted with a number of movable legs, capable of raising its hull over the surface of the sea. The buoyant hull enables transport ...

set up in the Galveston harbor.

History

The ''Ocean Star'' was built in 1969 in

Beaumont Beaumont may refer to: Places Canada * Beaumont, Alberta * Beaumont, Quebec England * Beaumont, Cumbria * Beaumont, Essex **Beaumont Cut, a canal closed in the 1930s * Beaumont Street, Oxford France (communes) * Beaumont, Ardèche * Be ...

, Texas by

Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation Bethlehem Steel Corporation Shipbuilding Division was created in 1905 when the Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, acquired the San Francisco shipyard Union Iron Works. In 1917 it was incorporated as Bethlehem Shipbuilding Co ...

(Hull Number 6845) for the Ocean Drilling and Exploration Company (ODECO) fleet. She worked in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

throughout the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast and drilled approximately 200 wells during her active life. The museum, sponsored by the Offshore Energy Center (OEC), is a non-profit organization funded through private donations, admissions, and corporate donations. The OEC acquired the ''Ocean Star'' and spent 2 years converting her into the museum. The museum opened to the public on April 27, 1997. In 2018, the Offshore Energy Center was renamed to the Oilfield Energy Center, in an effort to broaden the scope of education to include the onshore drilling processes as well.

Exhibits

*Offshore Drilling: The Promise of Discovery takes visitors on a behind-the-scenes journey of the technical process of extracting oil and gas offshore.
'Offshore Drilling: Interactive display highlights technological breadth & complexity of offshore E&P industry'' * The Hall of Fame, located within the museum, recognizes those persons and technologies that took the industry to sea, such as engineering giant

Brown & Root KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering. KBR works in various markets including aerospace, defense, industrial and intelligence. After Halliburton acquired Dress ...

founders George and Herman Brown; Ralph Thomas McDermott, who founded the offshore drilling and platform construction company J. Ray McDermott; rig designer and drilling contractor Alden J. "Doc" Laborde; former president

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...

; and oil company tycoon Dean McGee. * The Pipe Deck houses exhibits and equipment too large to be stored inside the museum, such as a

blowout preventer A blowout preventer (BOP) (pronounced B-O-P, not "bop") is a specialized valve or similar mechanical device, used to seal, control and monitor oil and gas wells to prevent blowouts, the uncontrolled release of crude oil or natural gas from a w ...

drill pipe Drill pipe, is hollow, thin-walled, steel or aluminium alloy piping that is used on drilling rigs. It is hollow to allow drilling fluid to be pumped down the hole through the bit and back up the annulus. It comes in a variety of sizes, strengths, ...

, and a cementing unit. * The Drill Floor is directly underneath the

derrick A derrick is a lifting device composed at minimum of one guyed mast, as in a gin pole, which may be articulated over a load by adjusting its guys. Most derricks have at least two components, either a guyed mast or self-supporting tower, and a ...

and is where the work of drilling a hole is done.

References

External links

Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum website

Google map of site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum Museums in Galveston, Texas Industry museums in Texas Petroleum museums Gas museums Energy museums in the United States

History

Exhibits

See also

References

External links