The southern part of the state is having a resurgence of oil drilling that it hasn't seen since the decades of the 1950s to the 1970s, said Scott Bellinger, editor of Michigan Oil and Gas News. The Albion-Scipio rock formation in Calhoun and Hillsdale counties produced more than 125 million barrels of oil during those two decades. Some wells also have been drilled in recent years, or are being scouted, in western Wayne and southern Washtenaw counties. In northern Michigan, a stampede for mineral leases began in 2010 after a company said it had hit a potentially lucrative new pocket of natural gas in deep layers of shale in Manistee County.

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