A British-born engineer, George Bernard Reynolds retired after 30 years of work in India. He then became interested in the oil industry, working first in oil fields in Indonesia. In the early 1900s, he was hired by William Knox D’Arcy to explore for oil in Persia. After drilling two dry holes in 1908 while working for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Reynolds drilled the discovery well of the first oil field found in the Middle East, the Masjid Sulaiman Field in the Zagros Basin. Following World War I, while working for Shell Oil in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin, Reynolds located several promising structures. He selected one, and in 1922 drilled the discovery well of the giant LaRosa Field. This little-known retired engineer opened up two of the world’s largest oil producing areas, the Middle East and Venezuela.