How much new US oil? Not a lot.

That will help Rowan's customers, but Mr. Kelly says the bill does not go far enough and is too little, too late. Last week, for instance, his company said that it is sending five jack-up drilling rigs to the Persian Gulf under contract with a Saudi firm.

"Congress could have been more open-minded about opening up areas off our coast for exploration. We have an extremely long coastline, from Maine to Alaska, and basically we are only allowed to drill in the central and western Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska," he says. "The marketplace is demanding that we go internationally."

In all, $1.6 billion of the $11.5 billion in energy bill subsidies is earmarked for the oil and gas industry. Much of that is directed at encouraging unconventional methods of extraction, such as deep-water drilling and the production of coal-bed methane and oil shale. Enhanced oil recovery also got a boost, with the authorization of incentives for injecting carbon dioxide into old wells to increase their production.

Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has an oil field in Wyoming that is more than 100 years old, and the company is using technology to "get the last drops," says Teresa Wong, manager of corporate communications. She points to this particular part of the bill as a positive step.

In addition to encouraging unconventional drilling, the new energy bill includes a few provisions to loosen constraints on conventional drilling. The land-use permitting process has been streamlined, hydraulic fracturing of wells has been exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act (except for diesel fuels), and the regulation of storm-water discharges during the construction of facilities has been limited.

But in the end, industry experts say, incentives for increased production are minimal.

Others in the industry believe the government should butt out altogether. "I don't like the government in private business," says Jeff Johnson, CEO of Cano Petroleum Inc., an oil and gas production company based in Fort Worth, Texas. "Your Microsofts of the world, your ExxonMobiles, your Ford Motor companies - none of these was built with government subsidies."

His enhanced oil recovery company has four old fields in Oklahoma and Texas that currently produce between 400 and 450 barrels of oil a day. With the help of new technology, he expects those same wells to yield 10,000 barrels of oil a day in the next three to five years.

The industry, says Mr. Johnson, is smart and strong and does not need help right now.

"At these current oil prices, there is more money floating around Wall Street looking for energy than I've ever seen," he says. "There are better places that those government dollars can go - people who are serving in the military, teachers, for instance."

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