New oil wells are going in every day throughout Appalachia thanks to an oil rush powered by record high prices. With crude selling for $60 a barrel, even the traditionally slow-producing oil fields in the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia, where most wells churn out one to two barrels a day, have become lucrative. With the cost of drilling a single well about $150,000, it’s far cheaper to reopen wells abandoned in the past because of low production. Most can be brought back on line for a mere $5,000, and a well that produces only one barrel a day will generate about $20,000 a year – not a bad investment.

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