In the August 1920 edition of Oil and Gas News, an excited reporter wrote about a region that “is attracting much attention due to the good [oil] wells that are being brought in.” Oil had been discovered on the Bertha Hickman farm in Oklahoma, a discovery that started the industrial music of the North Burbank Oil Field.
Ninety-three years and 319 million barrels of oil later, energy producers in the region are using an “enhanced oil recovery” technology that promises to extract enormous amounts of oil that are otherwise unreachable.
The July 1, 2013 edition of Oil and Gas Journal reports that Chaparral Energy has begun injecting carbon dioxide through “injection wells”—with the expectation of producing an additional eighty-eight million barrels of oil. . . .