By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Galveston is a tourist destination with numerous well-known facilities to provide for nonstop entertainment. Ocean Star Off Shore Drilling Rig has been amongst those attractions since 1997. The museum was once a working oil rig used in the Gulf of Mexico. Ocean Star is a one of a kind experience. It is the only off shore oil rig that has been converted to a museum open to the public.
Built in 1969 at the Bethlehem Steel yard in Beaumont, the rig served to drill 200 oil wells. It had a life span of 20 years and was in the ODECO fleet. Visitors can walk the platform where oil workers once lived and worked. The drill has been cleaned of all traces of oil and the rig was modified to accommodate the specifics of a public museum.
Museum Director, Lisa Linsinicchia remembers the early years, “We didn’t get many visitors when we first opened up.” Now the museum hosts at least 40,000 guests a year. Most of the guests have someone in their family who worked in the oil and gas industry. As they leave they often proclaim, “Wow, I had no idea what was involved in drilling for oil,” said Linsinicchia.
“We came in from Bakersfield California and are really enjoying the oil rig,” commented a former oil industry professional and his wife.
Education for the public and providing an insider’s view into the world of petroleum was the vision for the founders of Oilfield Energy Center. OEC is the volunteer organization that sponsors the Ocean Star.
Arriving at the museum, you will enter through the gift shop and then walk a long gangway over the water which opens to the rig. As you walk along, your eyes might be drawn to the pelicans that gather on the rocks below. Or you might find yourself distracted by the fishing boats on the right side of the gangway.
Stepping inside the museum, staff will greet you with a smile and direct you into the cavernous environment of a once working oil rig.
Ocean Star is a jack up drilling platform and the first display is an aquarium which hosts salt water fish and steel legs that were once used to “jack” the platform up or down. Just over your shoulder from the aquarium you might notice a fashion doll sitting in a case with other common household items made from petroleum.
Then begins the twisting and turning of a museum filled with dioramas and wall displays depicting the extraction of oil from the ocean’s floor. There are items such as drill bits, a driller’s chair and a control center. All were once used as tools to extract oil from beneath the earth’s surface. Three floors host the numerous displays many are interactive.
The atmospheric diving suit is a favorite for young and old. “We have visitors of all ages asking if they can climb into the suit,” said Linsinicchia. It is not interactive and is protected from climbers with a barrier.
If you think only men work on an oil rig, think again. Lori Fremin, a mechanical engineer remembers her days swinging out on a basket over the ocean from a boat to get onto a rig. Fremin currently serves as the Chairwoman for the board of directors at OEC.
Stepping outside, you will be able to come up close to the rig’s derrick. Visitors are often compelled to snap photos as it towers over them.
A bright object which looks like a spaceship is called an escape pod. The pod was designed to be used as an enclosed life raft in case of an emergency evacuation. You can step inside of what is known as a “downhole wireline doghouse” where scientists and engineers worked collecting data from deep in the earth.
A helicopter sitting up on the roof of the museum, a heavy lift-long-boom crane, a drilling cement unit and other large tools of the trade are all part of the museum’s outdoor collection.
The museum offers recorded, audio tours. Groups and organizations are invited to call and schedule a tour with a live tour guide. Displays are labeled with text. Guests are welcome to wander on their own and participate in the interactive displays. If you have questions, there are staff who will be happy to answer your questions.
