Tapped Out But Hopeful: A Break in Texas Oil Decline

from The New York Times:
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: November 2, 2007

CRANE, Texas - With oil prices setting records, years of neglect finally appear to be coming to an end. The Apache Corporation is drilling new wells. Workers are flocking to sparsely populated West Texas, living in motels and trailer parks. Dishwashers and teachers are fleeing their jobs for $60,000 gigs in the fields.

But for all the new wealth and activity, the best the industry can hope to accomplish is to slow the decline of American oil production. The good times here are not nearly as good as they were in the last big oil boom in the 1970s and 1980s — and nobody expects they will get that way, how ever high prices rise.

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