Another Century Of Oil? Getting More From Current Reserves

LANCE IVERSEN Corbis

From Scientific American:

Amid warnings of a possible "peak oil," advanced technologies offer ways to extract every last possible drop.

On fourteen dry, flat square miles of California’s Central Valley, more than 8,000 horsehead pumps—as old-fashioned oilmen call them—slowly rise and fall as they suck oil from underground. Glittering pipelines crossing the whole area suggest that the place is not merely a relic of the past. But even to an expert’s eyes, Kern River Oil Field betrays no hint of the technological miracles that have enabled it to survive decades of dire predictions.

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