Speaker Jeanne Saxon
Virginia Sigillo
Gordon Kesler and his wife Joyce have lived in the Sun Lakes community for the past 20 years. Along with his wife, he has started several businesses. Recently, Gordon self-published a fiction novel. The novel is fiction, but is based on Gordon’s 20 years in commercial espionage. The names of the scouts and the oil companies have been changed to protect their identity.
In the oil industry, there are a group of highly-skilled professionals known as “Field Scouts.” The more accurate term would be SPIES. During his many years spying, Gordon was hired by multinational oil companies, as well as smaller upstart exploration groups, to spy on competitors’ drilling operations.
As you may well imagine, scouts were enemy number one, because the last thing companies want to do is to lose valuable drilling information from wells in lands they are exploring for new reservoirs of oil and gas. The information gleaned from scouting was used to gain an advantage over other companies in negotiations to acquire mineral rights (oil and gas) on adjacent lands.
The book, Wolverine Hills Espionage Scout, portrays the life and death situations encountered in the field while spying on an oil well. Often, counter scouts are used to run interference and to do whatever is necessary to protect the client from losing information. When this scenario develops, the situation can and does get extremely combative; lives and the future of oil companies are at stake.
The setting for the story is in the remote forests of Northern Canada, and it is the middle of winter which adds an additional challenge to the task facing Max, the main character. Although this story takes place in Northern Canada, it could just as easily have taken place in the bayou of Louisiana or perhaps on the plains of North Dakota.
Wolverine Hills Espionage Scout leaves the reader with a great sense of the dangers of this little-known profession.
To obtain a copy, contact Gordon at 480-216-2111.