I am an Associate Professor of History and Geography at the University of Iowa who studies the history of oil and energy.  My research and teaching interests also include environmental history, the history of business and technology, the history of capitalism and globalization, and public history, which is a field that promotes the collaborative study and practice of history for a broader audience outside of academia.  I joined the University of Iowa in 2012 after eight years as Director of Global Studies in the College of Business at the University of Houston.

My work broadly investigates oil and gas (hydrocarbons), fossil fuels, and energy.  I am particularly interested in questions relating to innovation in oil, struggles over access to oil resources, the economic and environmental impacts of oil development, oil and natural gas politics and policy, and the interaction between technology and environmental processes in extraction.  I strive to demystify popular perceptions of the oil industry, which are polarized in the United States between righteous denunciations of “Big Oil,” epitomized by calls to “Leave It in the Ground,” and reflexive pro-oil boosterism, captured by the slogan, “Drill, Baby, Drill.”  We need a deeper and more nuanced historical understanding of oil to inform the vital decisions about energy that we face as a society.  Fossil fuels, especially hydrocarbons, have generated unprecedented wealth and prosperity for a large plurality, if not the majority, of people around the world.  But the benefits also came with social, political, and environmental costs.  The job of the oil historian is to weigh and analyze these trade-offs.

I examine oil and gas as giant, complex, and sophisticated industries.  I have written about petroleum geology and exploration, oil and empire, labor in the oil industry, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the peak oil debate, and U.S. energy policy.  In 2012, I co-edited a special issue of the Journal of American History on “Oil in American History”, which features 22 essays that demonstrate a wide range of research and perspectives on the subject.  The main thrust of my research examines the history of offshore oil and gas, one of the most capital intensive, technologically innovative, and environmentally risky industries in the world.  The future of oil extraction lies in the oceans, and as companies embark on an ambitious quest to draw oil from oceans around the world, I am dedicated to making sure we understand the issues relating to offshore oil’s past.  In 2007, I published a prize-winning book, The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (Texas A&M Press), that analyzes Shell Oil Company’s technological quest to find and develop petroleum reserves in ever-deeper ocean waters.

My research on offshore oil evolved into a long-range effort to preserve, document, and analyze the history of the offshore industry in the Gulf Coast region.  I have served as chief historian on three interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects sponsored by the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (since 2011, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM).  My expertise on the history of offshore oil has led to positions on high-profile advisory committees and a role as a regular commentator for print, radio, online, and television media.  In September 2010, I joined the President’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling as a senior policy analyst to provide historical expertise to the commissioners as they investigated the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo oil spill and developed recommendations for reforming federal oversight of the industry.  As a result of this work, I was recognized by the University of Iowa with the 2016 Award for Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research.

My current book project, Seabed Empire: The Politics of Offshore Oil in the United States, analyzes the politics and governance of offshore oil since the 1930s.

Featured Images: From June 2012 visit to Shell Oil’s Perdido Spar, the deepest offshore platform in the world, moored in 8,000 feet of water, 200 miles south of Galveston, Texas in the Alaminos Canyon, Gulf of Mexico.