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This past Saturday night I attended a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project (TORP) here at KU. I have to confess I wasn't expecting to have a very exciting evening, but the project is affiliated with my wife's department and the two directors, Paul Wilhite and Don Green, are friends.

It's not that I don't like celebrations. It's just that I didn't expect that the details of oil recovery engineering would make for fascinating after-dinner speeches. I was wrong. And, in fact, not only was the project itself fascinating, I decided that what it represents is important enough to share with all of you.

As I understand it, tertiary oil recovery is the recovery of oil from the ground after it has been pumped out on initial drilling and then pumped out again after more oil has been made available by putting water down the well. The third time at the well involves a good deal more science and art and may involve putting a gel down or injecting carbon dioxide.

To those of you who are not engineers (as I am not), the most important point in all this is that primary and secondary recovery only gets about a third of the oil out of the ground. Tertiary recovery goes after the remaining two-thirds. If successful, tertiary recovery in Kansas could produce oil revenues in excess of $1 billion. So, if these engineers succeed they could single-handedly reverse Kansas' economic decline.

In fact, during the last 30 years, they have had success in a number of their research projects and, hopefully, that success will continue and will produce further benefits to the state. But, to me, what was most fascinating about what I learned on Saturday night was not the details of the recovery process nor even the potential economic benefit to the state of Kansas.

What I found most interesting and important in this celebration was what the project represents in terms of university-state-private industry partnerships. To my mind it represents exactly the kind of thing that KU and other Kansas universities are trying to do and which make support of higher education in Kansas so crucial to the citizens and the economy of Kansas.

According to Wilhite, co-director of the project, in 1974 he and Green and other colleagues were trying to figure out a way to help the Kansas oil industry and, thereby, convince the Kansas Legislature that KU was worth its fiscal support. They wanted to do this because support for higher education had been weakened by the protests of the early 1970s. They decided that what they could do was start a project to help independent Kansas oil operators get more production out of their wells. Kansas has more independent operators than major oil companies and these independent operators have different needs from the majors.

Wilhite, Green and their co-workers decided to target their research and teaching efforts toward helping these Kansas operators. They convinced the operators and the state and federal governments that the project was worthwhile and they obtained start-up funds. Over the next 30 years, this three-way partnership has produced a number of important innovations for the Kansas oil industry, more than 70 students who received graduate degrees for research done in conjunction with the project and one of the most important ongoing oil recovery research projects in the nation. In recognition of this achievement, the chancellor surprised Green and Wilhite with a special award for their efforts.

Folks often say that KU cannot compete for the hearts of the average Kansan against K-State because KU doesn't have an extension service or a veterinary school. The theory goes that KU, unlike K-State, doesn't produce benefits for the average Kansan and has little effect in western Kansas. Well, the theory's wrong. Thanks to Wilhite and Green and dozens of their students and colleagues, Kansas oil wells will, hopefully, continue to produce oil for decades more and all of us will benefit every time we stop at a gas station to fill up. And all because of an idea some young KU faculty had in 1974 and followed through on for the next 30 years. That's what KU is really about.

Mike Hoeflich is a professor in the Kansas University School of Law.