As any oil and gas driller knows, unruly oil wells can trip, clog or catch fire. Oil wells have been ignited by everything from cigarette lighters to lightning.

One of the industry’s most famous sons is Ace Barnes, who has been fighting errant oil wells for the past 70 years. In 1991, along with many of his peers, he traveled to Kuwait to extinguish many of the 600 wells caused by Iraqi military forces as part of their scorched earth policy. He has been profiled in the video series “America!”, ...