Oil: The Luck of Roaring Oneida

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The boom, currently at 22,400 barrels of crude a week, shows no signs of abating. A freelance driller, Clarence ("Squeak") Collins, happily exhibits a geologist's map that shows 17 more underground oil pools in the county, all a mere 1,200 ft. to 1,700 ft. down. "Nearly all the wells in the county are drawing from a single pool now," he rhapsodizes. "Think what's still down there!" Oil experts estimate the area's reserves at 10 million barrels. Another independent producer, George Sakellaris, predicts that the natural gas that forces oil right into the storage tanks without benefit of pumps—and is now disposed of in burn-offs—will some day be even more profitable than the oil.