The NY Times highlights the recent improvements in oil recovery methods that have helped old fields to become an important source of new oil supply. I don’t believe we are running out of oil any time soon because there are abundant reserves of heavy oil in the world, and improved technology — along with a high oil price — will help us to extract it.

Find below some of the main points of the NY Times article:

Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the world’s reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before.

In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 3.3 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced. More recently, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultant, estimated that the total base of recoverable oil was 4.8 trillion barrels. That higher estimate — which Cambridge Energy says is likely to grow — reflects how new technology can tap into more resources.

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The oil industry is well known for seeking out new sources of fossil fuel in far-flung places, from the icy plains of Siberia to the deep waters off West Africa. But now the quest for new discoveries is taking place alongside a much less exotic search that is crucial to the world’s energy supplies. Oil companies are returning to old or mature fields partly because there are few virgin places left to explore, and, of those, few are open to investors.

At Bakersfield, for example, Chevron is using steam-flooding technology and computerized three-dimensional models to boost the output of the field’s heavy oil reserves. Even after a century of production, engineers say there is plenty of oil left to be pumped from Kern River.

“We’re still finding new opportunities here,” said Steve Garrett, a geophysicist with Chevron. “It’s not over until you abandon the last well, and even then it’s not over.”

Some forecasters, studying data on how much oil is used each year and how much is still believed to be in the ground, have argued that at some point by 2010, global oil production will peak — if it has not already — and begin to fall. That drop would usher in an uncertain era of shortages, price spikes and economic decline.

“I am very, very seriously worried about the future we are facing,” said Kjell Aleklett, the president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. “It is clear that oil is in limited supplies.”

Many oil executives say that these so-called peak-oil theorists fail to take into account the way that sophisticated technology, combined with higher prices that make searches for new oil more affordable, are opening up opportunities to develop supplies. As the industry improves its ability to draw new life from old wells and expands its forays into ever-deeper corners of the globe, it is providing a strong rebuttal in the long-running debate over when the world might run out of oil.

Typically, oil companies can only produce one barrel for every three they find. Two usually are left behind, either because they are too hard to pump out or because it would be too expensive to do so. Going after these neglected resources, energy experts say, represents a tremendous opportunity.

“Ironically, most of the oil we will discover is from oil we’ve already found,” said Lawrence Goldstein, an energy analyst at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, an industry-funded group. “What has been missing is the technology and the threshold price that will lead to a revolution in lifting that oil.”

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Since the dawn of the Petroleum Age more than a century ago, the world has consumed more than 1 trillion barrels of oil. Most of that was of the light, liquid kind that was easy to find, easy to pump and easy to refine. But as these light sources are depleted, a growing share of the world’s oil reserves are made out of heavier oil.

Analysts estimate there are about 1 trillion barrels of heavy oil, tar sands, and shale-oil deposits in places like Canada, Venezuela and the United States that can be turned into liquid fuel by enhanced recovery methods like steam-flooding.

“This is an industry that moves in cycles, and right now, enormous amounts of innovation, technology and investments are being unleashed,” said Mr. Yergin, the author and energy consultant.

After years of underinvestment, oil companies are now in a global race to increase supplies to catch the growth of consumption. The world consumed about 31 billion barrels of oil last year. Because of population and economic growth, especially in Asian and developing countries, oil demand is forecast to rise 40 percent by 2030 to 43 billion barrels, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Back in California, the Kern River field itself seems little changed from what it must have looked like 100 years ago. The same dusty hills are now littered with a forest of wells, with gleaming pipes running along dusty roads. Seismic technology and satellites are now used to monitor operations while sensors inside the wells record slight changes in temperature or pressure. Each year, the company drills some 850 new wells there.

Amazingly, there are very few workers in the field. Engineers in air-conditioned control rooms can get an accurate picture of the field’s underground reservoir and pinpoint with accuracy the areas they want to explore. None of that technology was available just a decade ago.

“Yes, there are finite resources in the ground, but you never get to that point,” Jeff Hatlen, an engineer with Chevron, said on a recent tour of the field.

In 1978, when he started his career here, operators believed the field would be abandoned within 15 years. “That’s why peak oil is a moving target,” Mr. Hatlen said. “Oil is always a function of price and technology.”