An Illinois Oil Well At Dusk

You probably think of an oil well as something you would probably see in Texas or Oklahoma, and you would be right - there are plenty of them to be found in those states. But if you're like most people, you probably don't know that if you drive across the United States you'll see oil wells scattered here and there in many locales.

The oil well featured in today's picture is located in Illinois, a state with a rich history of oil exploration and production dating all the way back to 1853, and the oil industry is still alive and well in Illinois today. In fact, several old oil wells are still pumping out crude right alongside modern high-tech versions.

The fact is that the United States has large quantities of crude oil and natural gas in reserve all across the nation, just waiting to be pumped out and used to help ease our national energy crunch. The problem is many of these pools of oil and gas aren't large enough to make drilling and pumping them out a profitable endeavor for the oil companies - but the skyrocketing price of crude oil imported from the Middle East just might change that at some point in the future.

In the meantime, I guess we're faced with the choice of either keeping the status quo and remaining at the mercy of the giant oil cartels or taking the bull by the horns and developing alternative energy sources like nuclear, wind, water and solar power, each of which is also rather expensive to produce on a large scale at the current time. Of course there is also the promise of coal gasification, but progress has been slow in that area as well.

The bottom line is that a strong American economy depends on us having an adequate, dependable, and affordable supply of energy to power our factories, homes and places of business. And our national security depends on it as well.

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