Oil industry will continue vital role

We're running out of oil, and too much of the oil we do have comes from foreign sources in unstable parts of the world. The oil we use is adding too much carbon to the environment and leading to global warming.

We need to find another source of energy.

That's the conventional wisdom, and it's all at least partly true, and it all motivates us to take action on the energy front.

We're building ethanol plants as fast as we can in Nebraska, and new incentives are promoting clean solar, wind and hydrogen energy initiatives.

But back to the beginning.

Are we really running out of oil?

Yes, if you're talking about the light, liquid oil that we've been drilling for a century, the kind that's easy and cheap to get out of the ground.

If you're talking about the thick, molasses-like stuff, or the oil that's trapped in tar sands and shale, the kind that's difficult and expensive to get to the refinery, we've got a lot left.

Since gasoline became the fuel of choice for automobiles at the turn of the century -- winning out over alcohol and electricity (sound familiar?) -- the world has used about a trillion barrels of oil.

A New York Times article published Monday cited one expert who said he "wouldn't be surprised" if Saudi Arabia's oil reserves -- officially set at 260 million barrels of oil, is actually closer to a trillion barrels of oil.

And, the Times article continued, is also about a trillion barrels of oil available as heavy oil, in tar sands and shale-oil deposits in places like Canada, Venezuela and the United States.

The problem is, getting oil out of the new sources, as well as finding new oil in old sources, requires methods of production such as pumping high-pressure steam, carbon dioxide, natural gas, hydrogen sulfide, or even water and soap, into the ground to free up the oil.

But it is possible to get the oil, thanks as well to new seismic technology, temperature monitoring, satellites and three-dimensional imaging.

It's all expensive, but as the price of crude tops $50 a barrel, it's worth the expense. Many old wellfields, long thought to be depleted, will be back in production for years using the new secondary recovery methods. One example cited by the Times is the Kern River oil field near Bakersfield, Calif., discovered in 1899, which fell to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, but is back at 85,000 barrels.

While we're excited about the prospects of alternative energy in Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas, there's plenty of activity in traditional energy for our area.

According the the Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Red Willow County produced nearly 300,000 barrels of oil in 2005, the latest year for which data is available. But Hitchcock County leads the state in oil production, with more than 566,0000 barrels, with Dundy adding more than 183,000, Frontier 25,000, Hayes 54,000, Furnas 12,0000 and Chase with more than 1,200.

As prices stay high, don't be surprised to see more activity in area oilfields far into the future.