Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary

Oil industry lore calls the war years the "Time of the Hundred Men," in reference to the skeleton crew that was left in Saudi Arabia to protect the wells against Axis aggression. In 1943, Everette Lee DeGolyer joined them. He was the eminent geologist, entrepreneur, innovator, and scholar who discovered the Golden Lane fields in Mexico and introduced geophysics to oil exploration. In the late 1930s, he established the DeGolyer and McNaughton consulting firm, a pioneering third-party appraiser of the value of petroleum reserves for would-be investors. DeGolyer agreed to serve on PAW under Ickes, and was assigned to appraise Saudi Arabia's value. He declared it a "galaxy of fields of the first magnitude," destined to be the most important producing region in the world within decades. A firsthand tour of the Middle East convinced him this was "the greatest prize in...