In the last five decades, India has made tremendous economic progress. One of the key pillars of its success has been its ability to harness the power of science and technology for development. In many key areas it has found men of vision and daring who have absorbed the latest technologies of the day and have been able to mobilize the brightest minds in the country to lay the foundations of a modern India. The key to this success has been scientists and technologists with a keen vision and deep commitment, supported by a forward looking political leadership of the day, a bureaucracy in tune with the needs of the country and a population willing to embrace the latest that modern science had to offer in its search for rapid economic development. Thus in the fifties came the dam builders like A N Khosla, followed by Homi Bhabha who harnessed the power of the atom and built the country’s nuclear capability through the Atomic Energy Commission. The country produced Vikram Sarabhai who led the county into the space era, V Krishnamurthy who built the heavy electrical capacity, the Tatas who laid the foundation of modern India’ s steel industry, SMPatil who developed an indigenous capacity for machine tools, MS Swaminathan who developed the seeds that led to the green revolution, MS Pathak who built the engineering consulting capability. These were the true founders of modern India on the basis of which the economic progress of the country was built.
Another of these areas was offshore technology. The creation of an indigenous capability and capacity in offshore technology laid the foundation of an oil industry that by the mid eighties was able to provide self sufficiency to the extent of 70%, created a completely new industry, mobilized the best of scientists and technologists and laid the foundation for both rapid economic growth and a new infrastructure for development.
In 1970, India had no capability for offshore engineering, it had no fabrication yards for building offshore oil platforms, there were no submarine pipelines to carry oil and gas from offshore platforms, indeed there were no offshore process platforms or terminals. No offshore drilling rigs patrolled the oceans, there were neither supply vessels nor fire fighting ships. In short there was nothing.
Yet by 1985- in just fifteen years, India had over 50 offshore platform off the coast of Bombay. It had discovered its largest oil and gas fields offshore and able to develop them within a short space of a decade. It had designed and built not only offshore well platforms, but also the most complicated and complex of process platforms that were able to separate oil and gas offshore and to transmit them to the shore. It had built a large number of major and minor submarine pipelines. It had developed an indigenous capability to design all offshore installations, which by 1985 was responsible for almost 80% of all offshore work. India had been able to convert three shipyards to build the latest offshore platforms and pipelines. It had over 20 offshore drilling rigs operating offshore, many of them owned and operated by Indians. These structures, most designed, fabricated and constructed indigenously enabled oil and gas production of over half a million barrels of oil and by the mid eighties and set the country towards self sufficiency.
This book, "Pioneers of offshore technology", is an attempt to chronicle the story of this latest effort to mobilize science and technology for economic development. It lays out for the reader the strategies and the driving forces that made this success possible and the young pioneers who made it possible. Not only did these young pioneers build and create the offshore technology in India, they also laid the foundation of a completely new industry, they went on to make major contributions to the international oil industry as well. Many of them went on to become chairman of international companies , create an offshore supply services company , design companies, and others became key players in offshore oil and gas companies in Korea, U.S, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore.
The book presents their stories and it is a chapter in our history of science and technology that the nation should be truly proud of.
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