Texas oilman Allan P Bloxsom III still remembers the taunts of "college boy" that greeted him on the offshore drilling rig where his father, desperate for his wayward son to shape up, sent him to work one summer. "Against my wishes I went and it changed my life," says Mr Bloxsom, now 63 years old and the president of Fort Apache Energy, a small company that operates oil and gas wells in Texas and Louisiana. "I was hooked." That was decades ago. Since then, his home state of Texas has more than doubled its crude oil output, helping to turn the US into the world's biggest oil producer. But as oil prices tumble - briefly ... (full story)