Skip to main content

Item 1038: 01038_Wilbourn, Phil_MMS/BOEM

 Item — Box: 17

Interviewer : Tyler Priest

Affiliation: University of Houston

Phil Wilbourn studied at Tennessee Tech University on a baseball scholarship, and graduated in 1966 with an engineering degree in hand. In 1967, Wilbur signed on with Texaco, and worked for two years focused on shallow-water platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Wilbur worked for Texaco across the Gulf Coast and in Saudi Arabia. He worked on the design phase for the LOOP port off of Louisiana as well. Wheeler worked with Curtis Burton and Steve Wheeler in investigating the future of technology in deepwater; after Texaco management declined to fund a program up to perhaps $70 million, Wilbourn and others at Texaco used a smaller amount of money to begin setting up a joint industry research group, known as DeepStar. The DeepStar group is widely recognized as helping to advance deepwater and subsea technology rapidly in the early 1990s, and thus contributing to the deepwater boom that followed.

Dates

  • 1996-2017

Conditions Governing Access

Open for research.

Oral history interviews are only available for use when the University of Houston Libraries is in possession of a release form signed by both interviewee and interviewer allowing for such access.

Extent

From the Collection: 25.0 linear feet

Repository Details

Part of the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections Repository

Contact:
University of Houston Libraries Special Collections
MD Anderson Library
4333 University Drive
Houston TX 77204-2000 USA
713-743-9750