Innovative thinkers

A true innovator, F. Tim Pease enhanced the design, construction and operation of offshore drilling rigs. His ingenuity and governance helped to shape the evolution of the offshore drilling industry, as we know it today. He is recognized as one of the original 15 industry pioneers to be inducted into the Offshore Energy Center’s Hall of Fame.

Born in Torrington, Wyoming, during the height of the Great Depression, Pease had big dreams at an early age. His childhood was spent on a farm, where his family worked hard to make a living. “I remember seeing my dad leave before light to milk the cows. It was a hard life,” Pease recalls. “I knew I didn’t want to be a farmer.”

Pease’s ticket out of farm life was one of two NROTC scholarships awarded by the U.S. Navy to Wyoming. With that, he was able to obtain a BS degree in civil engineering from Rice University. He later earned an MS degree from University of Houston, then completed the Harvard Graduate School of Business Advanced Management Program.

He served three years sea duty in the Navy before beginning his career as a structural engineer with Brown & Root, an engineering, procurement and construction company. 

In 1962, Pease joined The Offshore Company, which later became Sonat Offshore Drilling Inc., then in due course became Transocean Offshore. At the time, Pease was unaware of the fact that he would spend nearly three decades with the company; traveling the world, designing, building and overseeing the operation of some of the industry’s most advanced mobile offshore drilling rigs.

At a time when Gulf of Mexico deepwater was considered 150 ft, one of his first assignments became one of his most significant accomplishments. The 500-ft water depth Discoverer was the largest drillship of its kind. Pease’s revolutionary moored turret design allowed the ship to rotate 360° around a central turret, maintaining heading into the seas. The mooring turret consisted of a flanged cylinder, roller-mounted in the well beneath the derrick. The turret was moored by eight anchor lines. The ship rotated about the moored turret, powered by bow and stern thrusters, which required no adjustment or handling of the mooring lines. Pease’s progressive technology was one of the most valuable advancements in deepwater exploration, to date.

This resulted in a rig like none other. Discoverer successors went on to set world records in deepwater drilling, and continue to do so. 

Pease’s career furthered as he designed one of the first semisubmersibles with catamaran hulls and a buoyant deck, features that have since become a staple for modern-day semis. He also designed jackup rigs with hydraulic jacking systems, structures designed to withstand storms of hurricane-force waves and wind, as well as icy water and other harsh weather conditions. Additionally, he was responsible for the construction of the first cantilevered jackup rig. He has eight patented inventions related to offshore drilling equipment.

Although Pease has a long list of ocean engineering achievements, it is his teaching efforts that he claims to be most proud of. This is, perhaps, a congenital attribute passed down to him by his parents, both of whom were teachers. He not only set design and safety standards, he preached them. Pease contributed to the development of HS&E codes, and USCG and ABS rules for mobile offshore drilling units. He also was an instrumental participant on technical committees of API and IADC.

Now retired, Pease’s past success has not impeded his humble disposition. He says, “I was really lucky to get into the industry when I did. It was a matter of luck and the right timing. It was when the industry was really just getting started.”

Many of today’s engineering leaders are likely to disagree, however, because it was under Pease’s leadership that they were able to develop their own skills, and continue to further advance the offshore drilling industry.