To try to keep the world oil glut from getting any worse, the Texas Railroad Commissionoverseer of one-third of the U.S. outputrigidly limits the production of regular (i.e., primary-recovery) wells. But as part of its long-range campaign to spur oilmen to go after oil otherwise left behind, the commission grants unlimited production of secondary-recovery wells. These are wells in fields where the underground pressure that normally drives up the oil is exhausted and the oil can be brought up only by other means.
This hard way of getting out oil has now become a hot way. In the past ten...