Interviewer: Tyler Priest and Jason Theriot

Affiliation: University of Houston

Dan Godfrey moved to New Orleans in 1968 after completing a master’s degree in structural engineering at Washington State University. Godfrey soon signed on with Shell Oil. Some of his early engineering work focused on introducing saltwater disposal methods, newly required by federal environmental laws passed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Other stints included work from The Hague on North Sea platform installation, and in a Houston research center on methods for drilling in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. At the sanction of the Cognac fixed-jacket production platform in the mid-1970s, Godfrey was tapped to supervise its fabrication work. By the early 1980s, Godfrey had come to manage Shell’s offshore engineering and construction group in Houston, after which he served as a production superintendent for multiple Gulf of Mexico block areas. Come 1987, he also worked briefly in Brazil as a Shell manager with multiple responsibilities. Godfrey returned stateside in 1990 to work on the deepwater Gulf of Mexico Mars project early on in its development, shepherding it through a changing economic climate and challenging technical issues.