Administration, advised by father Prescott Bush, was assembling in south Florida and in
Guatemala under the code name of JM/WAVE, which in the spring of 1961 would
become manifest to the world in the form of the Bay of Pigs attempted invasion of Cuba.
In a Zapata Offshore Annual Report issued a couple of years later, Bush published the
following description of the nature of the company's business:
Historically, few major oil companies have owned their own offshore drilling rigs. These
operators prefer to contract for the services of rigs and their crews from independent contractors,
normally on a fixed cost per day basis. This policy enables operators to secure the best type of rig
for each job and relieves them of the responsibility of keeping their own rigs busy when their
programs are curtailed.The contractors who supply these rigs compete with each other to provide the most efficient crews
and equipment. Since the cost of moving such equipment is great, contractors must also have the
right type of rig available at or near the operator's lease at the time the operator wants to drill his
well.Off-shore contract drilling differs from contract drilling on land in many ways. Most land
contractors agree to drill a hole to a certain depth for a fixed cost. Thus, the drilling hazards
encountered on land are normally borne by the drilling contractor. Since off-shore contractors
normally furnish equipment on a day-rate basis, most risks in connection with a hole drilled
offshore are borne by the operator. Operators have representatives aboard off-shore rigs which
they have engaged to direct the actions to be taken in the event problems are encountered while
drilling.^A typical land rig costs between $500,000 and $1,100,000. A self-contained offshore rig costs
from $3,500,000 to $7,500,000. Thus, off-shore contractors have a much greater investment in
equipment than do land contractors. For this reason, the number of competing off-shore firms is
smaller. [fn 22]^This account makes clear that the most important factor for Zapata Offshore was
contracts from the big oil companies of the Seven Sisters Anglo-American cartel, the
world oil oligopoly which during these years defended its domination of the world oil
market with the assassination of Enrico Mattei, the President of the Ente Nazionale
Idrocarburi, the Italian State Oil Company, who had dared to undercut the arrogant
looting methods of the Seven Sisters and challenge the oligopoly in north Africa and the
Arab world. In the early years of Zapata Offshore, contracts had come from Gulf Oil and
Standard Oil of California, as we have seen. During the early 1960's, more and more
contracts came from components of Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch heart of the
Seven Sisters cartel, the dominant strategic force in the oligopoly. Zapata Offshore soon
had British insurance, British contracts, British investors, a British director, and drilling
sites in British Commonwealth oil fields in many parts of the world. This should come as
no surprise: after all, Prescott Bush's partner, Averell Harriman, had been Franklin D.
Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill during the first years of World War II, and Averell
later married the divorced former wife of Churchill's son Randolph.
Although Zapata Offshore was a company of modest dimensions, Bush nevertheless
created a network of subsidiaries which was suspiciously complex. This topic is difficult
to research because of the very convenient disappearance of the Zapata Offshore filings