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Atwood Oceanics

American energy company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ4818872
Source-derived summary

Atwood Oceanics, Inc. was an offshore drilling contractor headquartered in Houston, Texas. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ensco plc.

The company owned and operated 4 ultra-deepwater drillships, 2 ultra-deepwater semisubmersibles (can drill in water up to 12,000' deep), 2 deepwater semisubmersibles, and 5 high-specification jackup rigs.

In fiscal 2015, 5 customers accounted for a total of 63% of revenues: Noble Energy, Royal Dutch Shell, Woodside Petroleum, Chevron Corporation, and Kosmos Energy.

In fiscal 2015, the company derived 76% of its revenue from its 6 deepwater drillships and semisubmersibles.

In fiscal 2015, 71% of the company's revenues were derived outside of the United States. The company derived more of its revenues in Australia than in any other country.

History

The company was founded in 1968 by John Atwood.

The company began operation by 1970.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Atwood Oceanics” is american energy company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Atwood, Oceanics and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017, 2015, 1968, 1970—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968. For this dossier, Atwood, Oceanics and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american energy company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4818872. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2015, 1968 and 1970.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Atwood Oceanics”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Atwood Oceanics primary sources, Atwood Oceanics archive and Atwood research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Atwood Oceanics”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Atwood Oceanics” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.