DELHI – Working for Williams Well Service 56 years ago in Delhi Field meant 12-hour days and a long work week.

Sometimes, it meant traveling to other towns in Louisiana and Mississippi to search for oil.

But more importantly, it meant this tiny town on Interstate 20 in northeast Louisiana was prospering.

&#8220You had everything here in Delhi back then,” Mayor Lynn Lewis said. &#8220You had a lot of mom-and-pop grocery stores, parts stores and lumber yards. Delhi was developed into an economic center for the region. The work probably pulled people out of farming communities and put them into the middle class.”

But Delhi’s population of about 3,500 people quickly decreased after Williams Well Service &#8220scaled back operations” and Sun Oil Company closed. Since, the oil industry has slowed.

&#8220Sun Oil shut down around the mid-1990s, when (industry officials) finally shut everything down here,” Lewis said. &#8220Companies were going overseas for oil, and domestic production was going down tremendously. Also, people were retiring and we weren’t having that intellectual capital still going.”

Delhi’s mayor knows much about the industry in northeast Louisiana. His father, James Lewis, began working for Williams Well Service in 1950. He searched for oil the next 46 years.

&#8220I was 24 years old when I started working at Williams Well Service,” James Lewis said. &#8220Some of the work was hard, and some of it was good. I enjoyed it.”

Born in Seminary, Miss., 80 years ago, James Lewis grew up on a 200-acre farm. At 17, he followed his two brothers to Delhi to work on farms near Waverly, La. Two years later, he married Rene and they started a family.

But early in their marriage, the couple’s four sons rarely saw their father. He spent long hours working around oil wells.

&#8220When we were younger, we hardly ever saw him,” Lynn Lewis said. &#8220We’d still be in bed when he left, and we’d be in bed when he got home.”

&#8220Yeah, I would get up in the morning at 4:30 and be on the job by 7,” James Lewis said. &#8220I would eat lunch when I could, and would be back home by 9. I was off some weekends, but usually I worked seven days a week.”

As he looked over some old photographs of former co-workers standing around oil rigs, James Lewis thought about how renewed drilling in Delhi Field might change Delhi – again.

&#8220It’s hard to say. But if they start drilling here, that’s going to bring people into town.”

His son agreed.

&#8220I think it’s going to be extremely important for Delhi,” Lynn Lewis said. &#8220Once they start redrilling, it means more jobs for folks around town and for this region. As soon as they start moving in here, I expect them to have an immediate impact as far away probably as Vicksburg and other areas.”

Last month, Denbury Resources of Dallas bought the 13,636-acre Holt Bryant Unit in Delhi Field from Natural Gas Systems of Houston for $50 million, and will &#8220conduct an enhanced oil recovery project” in the unit, according to a press release.

The project will include extracting up to 40 million barrels of oil by injecting carbon dioxide into reserves.

The 12-mile-long Holt Bryant Unit covers much of the Delhi Field in Franklin, Richland and Madison parishes south of Interstate 20, mostly beneath pastureland. Natural Gas Systems will retain an interest in the unit as part of the sale price.

Holt Bryant Unit has produced about 200 million barrels of oil since its discovery in 1945, according to the company.

Denbury President and CEO Gareth Roberts said the company will invest up to $150 million to develop the field and $75 million to $100 million to build a 90-mile pipeline to transport carbon dioxide from Denbury’s Jackson Dome reserves to Delhi Field.

Oil continues to hover around $70 per barrel, but Roberts said Denbury based its projections on $60-per-barrel oil, which could generate billions of dollars in revenue over 20 years.

Denbury is the largest oil and natural gas operator in Mississippi, and owns the largest reserves of carbon dioxide used for tertiary oil recovery east of the Mississippi River. It holds operating acreage in south Louisiana, Alabama and Texas Barnett Shale.

NGS purchased its first oil and gas properties in Delhi Field in September 2003 and its second group of properties in central Louisiana’s Tullos Urania Field in a year later.

In 2005, Louisiana was the leading oil-producing state in the country, with 1,463,000 barrels a day, according to industry statistics.