In the winter of 2001, Tom Frantz and a friend were cruising in his pick-up truck along a stretch of Highway 33 in Kern County, California. Known as the Petroleum Highway, this particular stretch of the roadway cuts across some of the state’s largest oil fields. Frantz, a mustachioed man whose wispy white hair is usually hidden beneath a beige fedora, was born and raised in Kern County; he was used to seeing pumpjacks bobbing up and down on the west side of the region, but on this cool winter day, a plume of steam in the distance caught his eye.