William Bell, age 1?, of Atlanta, Ga., for his  question:

Why is there so much oil in Texas?

Petroleum is the oil which fuels our cars and makes the wheels of industry go around and around, The United States produces and uses more of this oil than any other country in the world, The yearly production is around 2,443 million barrels, ,and of this great river of oil, the state of Texas produces about 1,041 million barrels, which is almost half, Certainly there is a lot of oil in Texas.

Texas petroleum is buried in two vast oil fields. One is the Gulf Coast oil field which Texas shares with the state of Louisiana. This rich field follows the shore line of the Gulf of Mexico and much of it is under coastal waters. Many of its wells are drilled under the sea. Also in this field is the deepest oil well in the world, drilled more than 25,000 feet below the surfaces'

The northern part: of Texas sits smack on the tail end of the Midcontinent oil field. This means that there is oil buried under more than half of the state. And all this wealth was hidden in the ground many millions of years ago. We are not sure, but we think that this precious petroleum was made from humble little sea plants and animals,

How did the sea strew plants and animals over the dry lands of Texas? This happened many times during earth's long history. In the past 500 million years, shallow seas have slopped over great stretches of our continent. These waters teemed with countless small plants and animals. These waters receded to the deep ocean at least 15 times, leaving these small living things high and dry.

Geologists believe that petroleum was formed from these little marine plants and animals. Dust and silt buried them under new layers of earth,

Time, heat and pressure brought about chemical changes which turned the once living things into petroleum. A11 geologists search out the areas which once were swamped by ancient seas. Sometimes an area is capped with dense rocks, likely to keep buried oil and its gases from escaping. Here we look for an oil field. Geological maps show the areas of possible petroleum. Such maps show a wide corridor stretching from the Gulf Coast clear up through northern Canada. At its widest point, the oil rich region reaches from Mexico through Florida. The wide belt reaches as far north as the Great Lakes, along the eastern seaboard and way out into Atlantic and Gulf Coast waters. There are also oil reservoirs in California.

These regions of buried treasure and promised treasure are all where ancient seas slopped over the land. Naturally, they are the continents low lying areas, such as the Mississippi Valley. In times of rising seas, the water was almost sure to encroach up from what is now the Gulf of Mexico and over what is now Texas. This is when Texas was made rich in oil.