Comment

Comment by Dive Diva on November 3, 2009 at 12:28pm

You are absolutely right Bill. But...

Murray Black one of the original Associated Divers out of Santa Barbara, CA, founded Divcon back in the early 1960s. Divcon started out in CA but quickly left CA for Libya. Divcon quickly dominated the international market.

From the History of Oilfield Diving:
"In March 1964, a Global Marine engineer in Libya made an urgent call to Murray Black
in Santa Barbara. The Glomar V, drilling in the Gulf of Sirte for Libyan Atlantic, a subsidiary of the Atlantic Refining Company, had been shut down for 23 days straight at a
cost of about $30,000 a day.

When Black got out to the Glomar V it did not take him long to see why the divers were
not accomplishing anything. For one thing, they knew next to nothing about oilfield equipment;
for another, they were diving with a face mask and the second stage of a scuba regulator
on the end of a hose—gear that Black told them was fit only for cleaning a bathtub—and
they were communicating by pulls on a rope. The only way the compressor could be made
to put out enough air to get a diver to the bottom of the blowout preventer stack at 250 feet
was for a crew member temporarily to disable the relief valve. Since Underseas Ltd, the diving
contractor, had not seen fit to provide a chamber, the divers took all their decompression in
the water hanging onto one of the guide wires. ‘It was,’ said Black, ‘a school for heroes.’

The Divcon crew that replaced Underseas Ltd consisted of Black, Walt Thompson,
Gene Gallagher, Gene Mogis, and Jiggs Jackson’s brother Doyle."

On 6/20/1969 Oceaneering International was formed when Matt Simmons of Simmons & Associates, a venture capital group, put up $350,000 in return for 30% ownership of OI. That money and all of Cal Dive's and Can Dive's stock went into the kitty and Oceaneering International was born on 6/20/1969.

In the spring on 1971 International Utilities, the parent company of Divcon decided to divest itself of Divcon. Negotiations were underway with French owned Comex when Lad Handelman and Oceaneering scooped Comex and the rest is history.

I agree with you that the picture is of a Divcon diver, Libya, 1964. So why does the below page, taken from a 1970's Oceaneering International brochure say it's an OI diver? "History is written by the winners."

Comment by Bill Gardner on November 3, 2009 at 4:26am

you've made a typo-caldive + candive merge summer of 69 to form oceaneering, doesn't buy out divcon till 1971 from international utilities.

Comment by Dive Diva on November 2, 2009 at 1:51pm

Oceaneering, pipeline repair job, Libya 1964.