Derrick Zhang is a Chinese-born American who has made his name in the US offshore engineering sector, where he has worked on key developments in the Gulf of Mexico such as Shell’s Perdido spar and Chevron’s Big Foot tension-leg platform.

Zhang, who is president of Houston-based independent contractor DMAR Engineering, is now finding his deep-water expertise increasingly in demand in his native China as its oil industry looks to tap its own deep-water oil and gas potential.