Thousands of mature oil and gas fields across the lower 48 states encompass hundreds of thousands of marginal wells, commonly referred to as ‘stripper’ wells, i.e. wells that produce less than 15 barrels per day of crude oil. Few lay persons realize the importance of these wells and their significance to domestic crude oil supplies. Marginal wells produced more than 335 million barrels of oil in the United States in 2006. That's equivalent to more than 60 percent as much as the United States imports annually from Saudi Arabia. $BYSD