Strippers take off because crude really pays
Shouting against the windfall profits tax, oilmen tirelessly contend that higher earnings will motivate them to search harder for oil and gas. Sure enough, as oil profits have marched up this year, so has domestic exploration. Steel drilling rigs, eight and ten stories high, are rising at muddy, cluttered sites from the Rocky Mountain foothills to Louisiana's Cajun country. Although domestic production is not expected to rise in years ahead, the new activity will keep it higher than it otherwise might have been. And there is always...