STRIPPERS!

Or stripper wells to be more specific.
In any well oil production will inevitably drop. Well what happens when production drops too much? Normally they are just sealed off and abandoned by the petro companies as they move on to newer, more productive fields. Without using any enhanced recovery techniques the vast majority of the oil is left remaining in the resevoir. In the last hundred odd years of US oil production, hundreds of thousands of abandoned wells have been accumulating. When the price of oil rose some enterprising people started looking at these old wells. And with some minimal work, they began producing again. These reclaimed fields are now referred to as stripper wells. The EIA designation of which is a well that produces no more than 15 barrels per day. That doesn't seem like a lot, but there are a lot if these wells operating. An estimated four hundred thousand. And these wells add up to about 10% of the US total production.
And like a lot of oil projects. These fields are in danger. With the price of oil still deflated, the minimal amount of enhanced recovery that these fields require is starting to become uneconomical. Most operators are very small, and getting any sort of bank loan for an oil project is difficult to obtain. Hopefully the oul price recovers, and the slow trickle from stripper fields will continue to drip on.