Oil Field Revolutionary: The Career of Everette Lee DeGolyer by Houston Faust Mount II (review)

At the turn of the twentieth century, finding crude oil deposits depended on luck and interpreting surface geology. Around the same time, however, universities began training geologists who gradually professionalized the industry. Houston Faust Mount argues that Everette Lee DeGolyer began his career as a petroleum geologist when observation was his primary tool and ended his career when prospecting for oil relied on sophisticated technologies that analyzed underground geological formations and provided images of those formations. Furthermore, Mount states that DeGolyer was responsible for at least part of that revolution because he not only studied and adopted many new technologies for his own companies but as the author of scholarly articles he also promoted revolutionary technologies industry wide. Since DeGolyer, a forward-looking geologist, investigated, tested and eventually endorsed many experimental technologies developed to locate oilfields, Mount argues that he was an oil field revolutionary.

Mount establishes the connections between DeGolyer and the advances in oil prospecting within the first several chapters of the book. And he enriches that story by using maps and diagrams that DeGolyer himself created. These illustrations include accurately and clearly drawn sketches of incline formations, salt domes containing oil traps, and seismic charts. Such aids enhance the readers’ ability to understand the more technical aspects of the discussion. He also uses each of DeGolyer’s careers as a geologist, executive, entrepreneur, scholar and geo-politician to explain the advances made in the oil industry and to demonstrate DeGolyer’s personal evolution from a country boy to international traveler and oil expert. Each career expanded DeGolyer’s knowledge as he moved from field geologist in Mexico to Amerada executive, from entrepreneur to government functionary who developed a method to evaluate oil reserves, and finally from a scholar to a political functionary who represented the United States in the Middle East. While representing the United States government, DeGolyer also evaluated international oil fields and helped develop American foreign policy as it related to foreign oil producers. However, by compartmentalizing DeGolyer’s life, Mount loses some continuity and creates confusion among DeGolyer’s private ventures, his work on government agencies, and his various legislative committee assignments.

Mount describes DeGolyer as conflicted because he was foremost a geologist and entrepreneur while also working as a scientist, scholar, and political activist—careers that created divergent loyalties. However, only in the final chapter does Mount describe DeGolyer’s private life or explain his personal struggles. Finally, Mount fails to link the book’s topic to his description of DeGolyer’s forays into publishing.

Mount does a good job of narrating DeGolyer’s involvement in the nascent oil industry and explaining how the early advances made by petroleum geologists and geophysicist prepared the industry to enter the technological age. However, the story only tangentially touches on Texas and the Texas oil industry.