Tyler Priest earned a PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1996. He came to the University of Iowa in 2012, after eight years as Director of Global Studies at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston. His primary research interests are in the history of oil, energy, energy policy, technology, business, and globalization, as well as public history. 

Dr. Priest is a leading expert on the history of offshore oil and gas. His latest book, Offshore Oildom: America’s Energy Expansion into the Ocean (LSU, 2026), tells the riveting story of the United States’ quest to secure the oil riches of the sea, “a masterpiece in American energy history,” according to one reviewer. His previous book, The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in the Postwar United States (Texas A&M, 2007), won the 2008 Geosciences in the Media Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, “in recognition of notable journalistic achievement in any medium which contributes to public understanding of geology, energy resources, or the technology of oil and gas exploration.” Also, in 2008, Priest won the Alice Hamilton Award from the American Society for Environmental History for his article, “Extraction Not Creation: The History of Offshore Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico,” published in the international business history journal Enterprise & Society. The article analyzes how the region’s unique geology and geography shaped both business strategies and extractive technologies. 

Priest’s research led to a long-range effort to document, preserve, and analyze the history of the offshore industry in the Gulf Coast region, leading to the collection of more than 700 oral histories archived at the University of Houston and other Gulf Coast institutions. He has served as chief historian on three collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects sponsored by the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (since 2010, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management). His expertise on the history of offshore oil has led to advisory positions and a role as a regular commentator for print, radio, online, and television media. In 2010, he served as a senior policy analyst on the President’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. He lent historical expertise to the commission’s investigation of the disaster and the recommendations for government and industry reforms in its aftermath. As a result of this work, Priest was recognized by the University of Iowa with the 2016 Award for Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research.  In 2019, he launched a multi-media website, “Shell Oil’s Deepwater Mission to Mars,” which includes narratives, photos, videos, timeline, maps, graphs, and other resources on the history of deepwater oil in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Priest has also published on the histories of peak oil, Gulf Coast refinery labor, unconventional oil and gas, offshore oil in Brazil, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the social ecology of shrimp and petroleum offshore Louisiana, and the history of seismic exploration for oil. In 2012, he co-edited a special issue of the Journal of American History, consisting of 22 essays devoted entirely to the history of “Oil in America.” He wrote the volume’s keynote essay, “The Dilemmas of Oil Empire,” which calibrates the decline of U.S. global supremacy with various ways in which the United States has ceded control over the world’s oil. 

Teaching

• HIST:1115  The History of Oil
• HIST:2151  Introduction to the History Major
• HIST:3126  History of Globalization
• HIST:3230  American Environmental History
• HIST:3240  U.S. Energy Policy in Global Context
• HIST:3995  History Honors Research Seminar
• HIST:7227  Readings: American Environmental History

Awards and service

• Investment in Strategic Priorities Grant, University of Iowa (2024)
• Arts & Humanities Initiative Grant, University of Iowa (2019)
• Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians (2018-2019)
• College Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Iowa (2017)
• Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research Award, Office of the Vice President for Research and Development, University of Iowa (2016)
• Partners in Conservation Award, U.S. Department of Interior, for the History of the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry in Southern Louisiana, OCS MMS Study 2004-042 (2010)
• Geosciences in the Media Award for The Offshore Imperative, Association of American Petroleum Geologists (2008)
• Alice Hamilton Award, American Society for Environmental History for Best Article outside Environmental History (2007)
• Wayne Payne Teaching Excellence Award, C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston (2007)

Publications

Books

• Offshore Oildom: America’s Energy Expansion into the Ocean, LSU Press (2026)
• The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil's Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2007)
• Global Gambits: Big Steel and the U.S. Quest for Manganese (2003)
• Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997)

Articles

• "Built for Pyro: A Perfect Inferno on the Deepwater Horizon,” IN American Energy Cinema. eds. Robert Lifset, Raechel Lutz, and Sarah Stanford-McIntyre (2023)
• "Seismic Innovations: The Digital Revolution in the Search for Oil and Gas," Chapter 7 in Energy in the Americas, ed. Amelia M. Kiddle (2021)
• "Cat Crackers and Picket Lines: Organized Labor in U.S. Gulf Coast Oil Refining," Chapter in Working for Oil, eds. Atabaki, T., Bini, E., Ehsani, K (Jan 2018)
• "Shifting Sands: The 1973 Oil Shock and the Expansion of Non-OPEC Supply," IN Oil Shock: The 1973 Crisis and its Economic Legacy, eds. Elisabetta Bini, Giuliano Garavini and Federico Romero (2016)
• "Shrimp and Petroleum: The Social Ecology of Louisiana’s Offshore Industries," Environmental History 21.3 (2016): 488-515
• "Petrobras in the History of Offshore Oil," Chapter 3 in New Order and Progress, ed. by Ben Ross Schneider (2016)
• "Frackenstein’s Monster: A History of Unconventional Oil and Gas Technology," in Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America (2016) edited by Taylor Brorby and Stefanie Brook Trout
• "Hubbert’s Peak: The Great Debate over the end of Oil," Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 44.1 (2014): 37-97
• "Diving into Deep Water: Shell Oil and the Reform of Federal Offshore Leasing," IN American Energy Policy in the 1970s, ed. Robert Lifset (2014)
• "Who Destroyed the Marsh?: Oil Field Canals, Coastal Ecology, and the Debate over Louisiana’s Shrinking Wetlands," with Jason Theriot, Economic History Yearbook 2 (2009)
• "The ‘Americanization’ of Shell Oil,” in Foreign Multinationals in the U.S.: Management and Performance," IN Foreign Multinationals in the U.S.: Management and Performance, eds. Geoffrey Jones and Lina Galvez-Munoz (2001)
• "The Dilemmas of Oil Empire," Journal of American History, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Jun 2012)
• "Bucking the Odds: Organized Labor in Gulf Coast Oil Refining," Journal of American History, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Jun 2012)
• "Labor’s Last Stand in the Refinery: The Shell Oil Strike of 1962-1963," Houston History, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 2008)
• "Extraction Not Creation: The History of Offshore Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico," Enterprise & Society, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jun 2007)
• "Shell to Houston," The Houston Review, vol 3, no. 1 (2012)
• "Banking on Development: Brazil in the United States’s Search for Strategic Minerals, 1945-1953," International History Review, vol 21, no. 2 (June 1999)

Website

• Shell Oil’s Deepwater Mission to Mars

Commentary and Popular Writing