[BabyPeanut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.detnews.com/2005/business/0510/29/biz-364926.htm]Appalachian crude makes comeback amid record high prices (link)[/url]
By Roger Alford / Associated Press

SOMERSET, Ky. -- Steam rises. Valves hiss. And the flame atop a smokestack flickers like a candle in the breeze as one of the nation's smallest refineries tries to stay ahead of crude production in central Appalachia.

New wells are going in every day throughout the region thanks to an oil rush powered by record high prices. With crude selling for $60 a barrel, even the traditionally slow-producing oil fields in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, where most wells churn out one to two barrels a day, have become lucrative.

"No one expected oil prices to do what they've done," said Frank Lynch, president of Somerset Oil in this southern Kentucky town 80 miles south of Lexington. "With the high-dollar crude, all of a sudden we were thrown into the big game."

Somerset Oil had gone about its business almost unnoticed for decades. That changed last year when crude jumped beyond $20 a barrel and kept on rising.

Now Lynch said he expects the supply of crude from local wells to his refinery to increase from 2,800 barrels to 5,500 barrels within the next month and to 7,500 by the end of March. Not huge numbers by Texas standards, but respectable enough to catch the attention of investors.

[benzoil]

This looks like an excellent example of how relocalization will take place as energy gets more expensive. By degrees, people will realize that it makes sense again economically.

[nero]

This isn't relocalization at all. This is economics triumphing over geology if anything.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nero', 'T')his isn't relocalization at all. This is economics triumphing over geology if anything.

[seldom_seen]

Well let me tell you a story about a man named Jed...

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BabyPeanut', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.detnews.com/2005/business/0510/29/biz-364926.htm]Appalachian crude makes comeback amid record high prices (link)[/url]
By Roger Alford / Associated Press

SOMERSET, Ky. -- Steam rises. Valves hiss. And the flame atop a smokestack flickers like a candle in the breeze as one of the nation's smallest refineries tries to stay ahead of crude production in central Appalachia.

New wells are going in every day throughout the region thanks to an oil rush powered by record high prices. With crude selling for $60 a barrel, even the traditionally slow-producing oil fields in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, where most wells churn out one to two barrels a day, have become lucrative.

"No one expected oil prices to do what they've done," said Frank Lynch, president of Somerset Oil in this southern Kentucky town 80 miles south of Lexington. "With the high-dollar crude, all of a sudden we were thrown into the big game."

Somerset Oil had gone about its business almost unnoticed for decades. That changed last year when crude jumped beyond $20 a barrel and kept on rising.

Now Lynch said he expects the supply of crude from local wells to his refinery to increase from 2,800 barrels to 5,500 barrels within the next month and to 7,500 by the end of March. Not huge numbers by Texas standards, but respectable enough to catch the attention of investors.