Blowout (well Drilling) - Blowout Control Expertise

Blowout Control Expertise

Myron M. Kinley was a pioneer in fighting oil well fires and blowouts. He developed many patents and designs for the tools and techniques of oil firefighting. His father, Karl T. Kinley, attempted to extinguish an oil well fire with the help of a massive explosion — a method that remains a common technique for fighting oil fires. The first oil well put out with explosives by Myron Kinley and his father, was in 1913. Kinley would later form the M.M. Kinley Company in 1923.

Paul N. "Red" Adair joined the M.M. Kinley Company in 1946, and worked 14 years with Myron Kinley before starting his own company, Red Adair Co., Inc., in 1959. Asger "Boots" Hansen and Edward Owen "Coots" Matthews also begin their careers under Kinley.

Red Adair co. has helped in controlling many offshore blowouts, including;

• CATCO fire in the Gulf of Mexico in 1959
• "The Devil's Cigarette Lighter" in 1962 in Gassi Touil, Algeria, in the Sahara Desert
• The Ixtoc I oil spill in Mexico's Bay of Campeche in 1979
• The Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea in 1988
• The Kuwaiti oil fires following the Gulf War in 1991.

In 1994, Adair retired and sold his company to Global Industries. Management of Adair's company left and created International Well Control (IWC). In 1997, they would buy the company Boots & Coots International Well Control, Inc., which was founded by two former lieutenants of Red Adair in 1978.