From Tehran to the Permian

Scott Sheffield, founder and former CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, helped lead the U.S. shale revolution that turned America from the world’s largest oil importer into its largest producer. Then, he became the target of a federal investigation that nearly destroyed his legacy.

In From Tehran to the Permian, Sheffield tells the firsthand story of one of the most consequential careers in modern American energy. He grew up in Tehran, Iran, in the 1960s and early 1970s, watching Westerners move freely through a country that would soon fall to revolution — a lesson in energy dependence that shaped the rest of his life: a nation reliant on others for oil is a nation exposed.

Sheffield returned to Texas and built Parker & Parsley, a small West Texas independent, into Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States. He steered the company through the oil busts of the 1980s and the 2008 financial crisis, building a culture that retained employees and loyalty while competitors cut both.

His defining bet came in the Permian Basin, a West Texas oil field geologists had written off as exhausted. Sheffield’s decision to drill Permian shale helped drive the U.S. shale boom, reshaping global energy markets, lowering costs for American households, and redefining U.S. energy independence.

In 2024, ExxonMobil’s $59.5 billion acquisition of Pioneer put Sheffield at the center of a federal antitrust case: the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused him of colluding with OPEC to manipulate oil prices and barred him from joining ExxonMobil’s board. What followed was a two-year legal fight to clear his name — a battle that ended in vindication, but only after lasting damage to his reputation.

Part memoir, part business case study, part cautionary tale, From Tehran to the Permian is a firsthand account of the shale revolution from one of the executives who led it, and a clear-eyed look at what it costs to build an American energy empire — and what it takes to defend it. 

Includes an afterword by Bryan Sheffield.