Interviewer: Preetam Prakash

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Bobby Jones at the Wayne County Vo-Tech Center had mentioned James Williams as one of the people in the area that Preetam should try to contact for an interview. Preetam and James met at James’ house a few days after speaking on the phone. James was one of the few people that Preetam interviewed in MS who had spent a substantial part of his career working overseas. He had attended junior college for two years and had then worked in the lumber industry until a friend had told him about the opportunity to work onshore in the late 1970s. He had worked onshore for several years until informed by another friend about the increased pay and other benefits offshore. The rig he had started out working on for Chevron had soon moved overseas to Argentina in the mid-1980s and he had decided to go overseas with it. Since then, he had worked in Brazil, the Middle East, Trinidad, and Nigeria, among other places. He reported greatly enjoying most of his experiences overseas, stating that the Middle East was the only place he worked where he had felt uncomfortable and somewhat unwelcome. He had eventually worked his way up to Offshore Installation Manager (OIM). He discussed the importance of keeping work life and home life separate given the sometimes extremely stressful nature of offshore work at higher management levels and the fact that one was away from home for a month at a time. He had left offshore work in 2005. Afterwards he had consulted for a short period of time for onshore rigs, but had not cared for onshore work, where he claimed efficiency was lacking.