Interviewer: Jason Theriot

Affiliation: University of Houston

George Benoit hailed from Lafayette, Louisiana, and signed up with Tennessee Gas Transmission Co. (Tenneco) in 1960. There, he assisted in surveying and clearing the right-of-way for the Muskrat line. After being promoted to a corrosion technician at Tenneco in 1965, Benoit finished a degree at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. By 1972, Benoit was transferred to Houma, to work in Tenneco’s engineering department. There, he helped to profile the subsea valves in the Gulf of Mexico, working to eliminate protrusions that would snag the nets of the local shrimpers. From 1974 to 1981, Benoit worked as chief inspector for several of Tenneco’s major pipeline systems in the Gulf of Mexico. By the 1990s, Benoit worked as a superintendent in several districts for Tenneco. Benoit retired in 2008, after forty-three years in the business.