bubble_contagion – how is the oil industry ramping up? Drilling new wells? Where? Buying the tools to extract oil from the oil sands? I think the era of cheap oil is over – there is a lot more oil, but it is getting more and more expensive to extract. The oil companies were not extracting it, because the cost of oil was too low for them to recover the cost. Last, what is your perspective on why the oil companies have record profits? Is it as my brother said, namely that they are now able to charge record amounts for their domestic (free) oil wells? So the profit increase is from the domestic portion of their reserves.