Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-06-22
NOT QUITE so BAD.
Fearful Forebodings ola New Jersey
Scientist Made Light OF,
SECUTED BY Mr.. ASHBURNER
he Does Not Fear Either the Wrecking of a
Continent or Ofthe Globe
BY THE EXHAUSTION OF NATURAL GAS

The doom of Western Pennsylvania was
predicted and explained to New York
Herald reporter the other day by ]. E.
Thickston, who the Herald says sis we'll
known scientist and astronomer living at
Metuchen, n. j." While speaking of the
Johnstown horror, he said:
1.-THE news from Central Pennsylvania is
awful but this may be only very little thing
compared with what may yet occur. Near and
west of the Alleghenies great opening within
the earth's crust must be made somewhere by
the escape of natural gas Will the earth settle
and ill the empty places or will air pass in and
thereby make it possible for the immense reser-
voirs Of gas, stored away no one knows how far,
to explode and make an upheaval?
Many people believe there is gas enough un-
der Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio to
blow the country from Lake Erie to the MO-
nongahela
INTO PRoMISCUoUS FRAGMENTS.
when oil was struck at Oil Creek in 1859,
umid folks feared collapse and sinking OF
the oil field, but that danger was obviaied by
water running into the wells as the oil ran out.
The dreaded vacuum never came, as water TOOK
the place of the removed oil. 1t is not SO IN
this case. Water is not filling up the gas wells
may be is not really very enjoyable thing to
revolve in our minds these pleasant June morn
ings.
"a submerged valley lined with the bones of
1900 men, women and children is fearful
thing in the history of the human race, but
what of that compared with wrecked conti-
nent? What of that compared with a world
blown open or blown to fTagmentsp am not
an aiarmist OF a sensational Virgins. do not
believe Old Mother Earth is about to be shot
-, k,,4 s6aro r1naU ha
ahead in this direction, and although we
grieve over the Conemaugh catastrophe, let us
be thankful that there has not been natural
gas explosion out West and that there are not
two rings instead of one set of asteroids In the
material heavens"
PITTsBURG's GEoLoGIsT SMILES.
A reporter of THE DISPATCH took the
above to the Westinghouse building yester-
day and had Mr.. Chas. A, Ashvurner, OF
the PENNSYLVANIA and United States Geo.
logical Surveys, read the clipping. He
laughed and replied:
"The statement that the Johnstown dis
ter was as nothing compared with what may
happen by the blowing up of Western Penn
sylvania and Eastei Ohio into promiscu-
Gus fragments through the exploitation OF
our natural gas supplies is simply prepos-
ferrous. Still, this fear of what may occur
in our natural gas regions has gotten such a
hold upon many intelligent people not IA
miliar with the facts that it calls for the
most positive condemnation. In the first
place, no cavity exists under Western Penn
sylvania where natural gas is obtained of
appreciable size, that is, of size sufficiently
great for the smallest insect, If other condi-
tion made it possible, to descend one of our
natural gas wells, pass through channels in
the gas reservoir rock from the bottom of
this well to the bottom of an adjoining well
100 feet distant and return to the
surface through the second we'll,
and yet this same gas reservoir
rock is sufficiently porous to con-
tain in every acre of surface under which it
lies with thickness of 100 feet, and with
the gas at pressures frequently found be-
tween %, 600 600 and 100000 cubic feet
of natural gas. In this case the porosity of
the gas reservoir rock is hardly noticeable
to an ordinary eye, and about the same as
the porosity of the ordinary fine grained
sandstones used for building purposes
around Pittsburg.
SOME PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS.
''Some of our oil and gas sands are very
much more open and some very much more
compact than the case cited, and therefore
contain more or less gas per cubic foot of
rock, still of the many thousands of speci-
mems / have examined I have never seen
one with as large pores or cavities in it as
one frequently observes in many of the
open grained and porous sandstones and
coaglomerates which are being constantly
used for structural purposes, so that it is
simply absurd to think of any of the gas
reservoir rocks giving way under the weight
of the superintendent strata.
''Several years ago [ estimated from care
full records of the production OF oil wells
that many of our oil sands have produced
900, 600 barrels of oil per square mile OF sur
face, and from examinations made of the
oil sands themselves, 1 believe that only
one-tenth of the oil contained in the sands
can be obtained through wells, the other
nine-tenths being held by capillary attrac-
ton in the porous sand SO that in many sec
tons of our oil regions the oil sands contain
under one square mile of surface 5000, 900
barrels of petroleum. These sands vary
from 20 to 80 feet thick, and it might be
supposed by many who had not investi-
gated the facts that in order to hold
this immense bulk of oil, that very
large caves would have to exist in the oil
sand, but such is not the fact since the oil
sands are identical in structure and poros-
ity with the gas sands. An eminent Scotch
geologist has recently made extensive ex-
periments in the porosity of many of our
building stones and their capacity to hold
water under different pressures and the re-
suits of his experiments prove that oil and
natural gas sand beds are not exceptionally
porous.
AN EXPLOSION IMPOSSIBLE.
'The eminent astronomer and scientist
claims that If the surface of the earth in
our natural gas districts does not cave in,
a tremendous earthquake, that
then the crust over the exhausted reservoirs
will be blown up by air mixing with the
natural gas as the reservoir becomes ex-
hausted. Now any one familiar with
the physical conditions of our gas wells
knows this to be impossible. As long
as the gas wells discharge natural gas under
a pressure exceeding that of the air at the
mouth of the well (about Is pounds to the
square inch) air cannot get into the gas well
to mix with the gas to form an explosive
mixture, much less get into the gas reser-
voir rock from 800 to 1000 feet below the
top of the well. 1t requires from 8 to IA
volumes of air to one volume of natural
gas to produce an explosive mixture, and
long before the pressure of the gas could
get so low as to permit nine volumes of air
to enter the well and gas sand, with one
volume OF gas, both the gas sand and we'll
will have been flooded with water, which
would have sealed both the gas sand and
the well, preventing the flowing out of any
more natural gas until pressure might be
to exceed the pressure of the