The Oil Drum

Saratoga is a piercement salt dome about 40 miles northwest and about of Beaumont and about 70 miles northwest of Houston. It was one of the first Gulf Coast fields (1902) and has produced around 160 million barrels from miocene sands over the caprock and frio and yegua sands pinching out against the flanks. I don't know of any Wilcox there, but its certainly on trend.
  There are a huge number of faults and reservoirs, and at least 28 producing sands. It was drilled to a very high well density by numerous operators. I did a lot of work there in 1984-1986, and the operator I was working with drilled about 20 frio wells in the field.
  Mobil had the biggest lease in the field and got a grant and started a fireflood. For the non-industry types, thats where an operator pumps air in the reservoir and sets it on fire because heat makes oil thinner and the combustion gases help drive the oil through the reservoir rocks, about 1200 ft. deep and small acreage, less than 500 acres. They got production up to about 2,000 barrels a day by my recollection, and changed the oil from old oil to new oil under the Windfall Profits tax,plus got DOE Grants and Tax Credits.I don't remember what the cost was, but, the lifting costs were not cheap. And it was a couple of hundred wells-they had a large crew working for them-20 or 30 pumpers and technicians. Plus engineers, accountants, investor relations flacks, human resource folks, ect., all of the expensive supernumeraries of a big oil company.
  I bought a ten acre lease next door that had five wells and new tanks, the operators had just walked away and left it when prices fell to $12 a barrel and raised $20K by hook and crook and got the lease up to about 10 bbls a day of production. We operated it for about a year, then sold the wells. My investors all made some money, but I figured out my  net was about $5 per hour and a heck of a lot of gray hair and much experience. And with prices at $60/bbl I wish I had the lease back, the wells will still pump a couple f barrels a day, and have for the last 20 years in the oldest part of a field now over 100 years old.
  So, in conclusion, I just don't see how big companies are going to raise US production by redeveloping old fields. But  I think there is lots of oportunity for small operators here on the Gulf Coast to make a good, honest living pumping the dregs. Bob Shaw is right, conservation makes the best economic sense, but its important to recover what'sleft.