Seeking New Oil in Old Fields

Wildcatters are drilling again in the Eastern U.S.

Edwin Drake launched the petroleum age in 1859, when he drilled 69½ ft. into the ground along Oil Creek, near Titusville, Pa., and hit history's first oil gusher. Now, after more than a half-century of decline, the oil-and gasfields of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and New York are gurgling anew. The fields are part of what geologists call the Eastern Overthrust Belt, a corridor of convoluted limestone, sand and shale that stretches 1,200 miles along the slopes of America's Appalachian Mountains, from the Adirondacks to Alabama....