I wish to thank the researchers who brought the Gulf of Mexico Offshore Petroleum Oral History Project to fruition and, particularly, I wish to thank the men and women who shared their testimonies with the researchers, Minerals Management Service (MMS), and the world. The dedication of researchers and participants alike made the History Project into the success that it is. The research team asked me to write this preface because of my work in making this an MMS study. While I am proud of the part that I played, my role was to state the obvious. Everywhere my job took me, people said that the history of offshore oil needed to be known, that its story of inventiveness and entrepreneurship is ageless but its pioneers were aging, and that it would be lost if nothing were done. My one virtue was to be sufficiently naive or hopeful to say "let's try."