Squeezing More Oil Out of the Ground

In a draft of an article that appeared in the October 2009 edition of Scientific American, Leonardo Maugeri predicts that new technological breakthroughs will boost the oil recovery rate from around 35% at present to more than 50% by 2030. “If my estimates are correct, we will have oil for the rest of the 21st Century,” writes Maugeri, a senior vice-president at the Italian energy company ENI.