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Red Adair
Summary
Paul Neal "Red" Adair (June 18, 1915 – August 7, 2004) was an American oil well firefighter. He became notable internationally as an innovator in the highly specialized and hazardous profession of extinguishing and capping oil well blowouts, both land-based and offshore.
Adair was born in Houston, Texas, the son of an Irish immigrant blacksmith and his wife. He attended Reagan High School.
During World War II, Adair served in the US Army, in a bomb disposal unit. After the war ended, he started working in the oil industry. He started his career working for Myron Kinley, the "original" blowout/oil firefighting pioneer. They pioneered the technique of using a V-shaped charge of high explosives to snuff the fire by the blast. This was known as the Munroe effect, and Adair saw it used in bazookas and the atom bomb.
In 1959 he founded Red Adair Co. Inc. Over the course of his career, Adair battled more than 2,000 land and offshore oil well, natural gas well, and similar spectacular fires. He gained global attention in 1962 when he tackled a fire at the Gassi Touil gas field in the Algerian Sahara nicknamed the Devil's Cigarette Lighter, a pillar of flame that burned from 12:00 PM November 13, 1961, to 9:30 AM on April 28, 1962. In December 1968, Adair sealed a large gas leak at an Australian gas and oil platform off Victoria's southeast coast.
In 1977, he and his crew, including Asger "Boots" Hansen and Manohar "Man" Dhumtara-Kejriwal, contributed to capping the biggest oil well blowout to have occurred in the North Sea. At the time this was the largest offshore blowout worldwide, in terms of volume of crude oil spilled. This took place at the Ekofisk Bravo platform, located in the Norwegian sector and operated by Phillips Petroleum Company, now ConocoPhillips.
In 1978, Adair's top lieutenants Hansen and Ed "Coots" Matthews left to found a competitor firm, Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc.
In 1988, Adair helped to put out the UK sector Piper Alpha oil platform fire in the North Sea.
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