The La Rosa field, which had not appeared particularly promising at first, had been selected and staked out by the local Shell manager, George Reynolds. He was the very same George Reynolds—the “solid British oak”—who had resolutely guided Anglo-Persian’s project in Persia to its first discoveries a decade and a half earlier in the face of enormous obstacles, and then had been let go with nothing except a minuscule bonus. A decade and a half earlier, his persistence had opened up the Middle East to oil production. Now he had done the same for
