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With oil dancing close to $66 a barrel on the open market, companies are now exploring the remote spots that hold most of the world's untapped supply. After several years of record profits, the energy giants have plenty of cash to finance the dig. The main thing holding them back is a resource scarcer than crude: engineering talent. Because of layoffs in down times and opportunities in sexier fields of technology, fewer petroleum engineers are graduating from U.S. schools. A mere 1,500 are enrolled this year, down 85% since 1982 -- back when Dallas was the hit TV show.

This crisis is sparking a war for talent in the industry. Oil-field services giant Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB ), for example, recently lost a deepwater drilling expert to a client who tripled his salary. And that was before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. "The people shortage was extremely acute before Katrina and is now far worse," says Matthew R. Simmons, chairman of energy investment bank Simmons & Co., based in Houston, Tex. "The major oil companies are now poaching trained people from the service industry and no service company has better trained people than Schlumberger."