Sam L. Pfiester

Sam L. Pfiester was born and raised in the trans-Pecos region of far West Texas. After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in Plan II, he joined the US Navy and served two tours in Vietnam. One of the tours was as senior advisor to a Vietnamese river patrol group. The Perfect War is a novel he wrote portraying his experiences living with the Vietnamese and fighting a war in the rivers and canals along the Cambodian/Vietnam border.

Since 1972 he has been actively involved in oil and gas exploration. Exploring for oil is an intriguing game: you can visualize the subsurface, and you can measure rock properties and characteristics, but you can't SEE beneath the surface. All modern technology, including 3D seimograph and a large array of electric logs, enhance the understanding of the subsurface, but even with the newest technology, oil is difficult to find. Oil exploration is like a cross between a murder mystery and a treasure hunt, with plots and subplots and false clues,where the treasure is buried more than a mile beneath the surface.

From his own experiences drilling for oil and using modern technologies, he became intrigued with how the early pioneers broke the geologic four-dimensional puzzle to discover oil. His book, The Golden Lane, is a novel based on a true story of one of the great oil industry pioneers, Everette DeGolyer, and how he found oil in Mexico during the middle of the Mexican Revolution 1910-1914.