Boots Hansen, David Thompson, James Tuppen and Coots Matthews; Fortune Magazine, 1997 Renown oil well firefighter and blowout specialist, David Thompson passed away Saturday evening, April 25, 2026, in San Antonio, Texas. He was 73 years old. From an intense background in various oilfield service jobs with Shell, Amoco and Best Hughes, David went to work for Boots and Coots, Inc., Houston, Texas, in 1984, under the tutelage of legendary blowout specialists, Boots Hansen (1926-2019) and...

Altamont Field in Duchesne County, in the N.E. part of Utah, was rocking in the late 1960's and early 1970's and some deep Green River and Wasatch oil and gas wells were being made by a Shell and Chevron Joint Venture in the area. Brinkerhoff Drilling Company, Denver, a well-known Rocky Mountain contractor owned by the famous, Sonny Brinkerhoff, had a number of rigs working in NE Utah drilling in the Altamont Field and in the fall of 1971, before the first big snows came, it had two of its...

This is an empty VLCC inbound thru the narrow confines of the Port Aransas ship channel, SE of Corpus Christi. On big NE hurricane swells I use to paddle across this ship channel to San Jose Island to surf big waves 200 yards from the end of the jetties, a half mile off the beach. The ship channel is 340 yards wide. The ocean water in it is deep blue until one of these big things push through it. It's not unusual to see Mako sharks free jumping in the ship channel; it's full of sea life....