Interviewer: Jason Theriot

Affiliation: University of Houston

John Sevin graduated from high school in 1982, took a degree in petroleum engineering technology from Nichols State University, and began working for McDermott in 1988 at its Amelia yard. Sevin worked on some of the pipe machining for Shell Oil’s landmark Auger tension-leg platform in the early 1990s. When Shell began to fabricate the even larger Mars tension-leg platform, Sevin was appointed as head engineer for one of the facility’s five topsides modules—the process module. Sevin also worked on Shell’s Ram-Powell, Ursa, and Brutus TLPs, rounding out his career with Bay Offshore.