The petroleum age dawned on a Texas hill called Spindletop more than 100 years ago. The first predictions of the demise of oil weren't far behind.

Today's talk of looming oil scarcity and permanently high prices echoes the dire forecasts of earlier eras: Experts predicted the "end of oil" in the early 1920s, again after World War II, and most famously in the 1970s -- not long before oil prices collapsed from $38 a barrel to $9.

In each case, what doomsayers underappreciated was the powerful impetus that rising prices give to innovation and technology; when prices surge, petroleum prospectors become uncannily good at figuring out new ways to suck hydrocarbons out of the ground.

That's happening again today. Oil prices are hovering at about $60 a barrel and aren't likely to go down much in the short term. The high prices are catalyzing experiments with new methods that promise a revolution in the energy business. Some are old approaches that have been given new economic life; others rely on massive computing power that simply wasn't available before.