America's crude oil supply hub

"The last three or four years have been the first time in a number of years that things seemed to be working to our benefit as a community," Rick Reiley, the town's director of downtown development. He is fatalistic, however, about the cyclical nature of oil: "We're an oil town - we've been an oil town for a hundred years. We know there are ups and downs and we try to prepare ourselves for the downs." Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

"Oil is the lifeblood of Cushing," says Jim Perry, managing editor of the Cushing Citizen newspaper. "The storage capacity is large. Even more mind-boggling is the flow of oil in pipelines through Cushing." Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

Pipelines at the Enbridge oil storage facility. A spaghetti junction in the continent's network of underground oil pipes, Cushing is the official delivery point for any oil bought on Wall Street's Nymex commodities exchange. Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

Since the beginning of the decade, the amount of oil stored in Cushing has jumped by more than 50%. In the last four years, the value of the stuff has rocketed as the price of crude has tripled Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

An oil-themed sculpture on the country road into Cushing proclaims that the place is the "pipeline crossroads of the world" Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

The storage facility has 93 tanks including vast 575,000-barrel drums which each hold more than a small ocean-going oil tanker. Hundreds of vast steel storage tanks hold 46m barrels of oil - worth, at current prices, more than $5bn Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

Things are looking up for Cushing, Oklahoma, the rural community where Wall Street's energy gambles are translated into reality Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

Stripper oil well in backyard. Long forgotten marginal wells in backyards and farmers' fields have suddenly become attractive. There are 65,000 in Oklahoma alone, typically producing fewer than ten barrels of oil a day Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

A stripper well pump head. "While a lot of towns have suffered some economic setbacks recently, we have not," Cushing's mayor, John Henckel, told the Guardian. Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency

BP has more than 60 tanks in Cushing, holding about 10m barrels of oil Photograph: Mark Kraus/agency