The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-11-27

cap over the pipe-bottle the gas up, sc
! to speak, and wait for the day Wnen
it would become valuable. But in nun
dreds upon hundreds of instances they
did nothing of the sort, but simply
let it burn, hoping that one day pur-
| chaser would come along and take the
thing off their hands. There is no
room for doubt that literally billions OF
feet of gas was dissipated IN thln ar
in Sust this way. And all TINS gas
never appeared in any statistics OF
production or in the amount OF coal
displaced 1t was simply thrown away.
But if enormous quantities were
wasted in this fashion, even greater
quantities were wasted in the way that
the gas was used. Take the city OF
Pittsburg as an example. There, to-
day, natural gas is burning under a
pressure of half an ounce. For years
it was used under a pressure OF elght
pounds, that is to say, at SO times the
pressure that it is now used. And even
this is fully four times as strong
pressure as would be required for use
in the most economical wa--
NINETEEN-TWE WASTE
It will not. of course, be fair to jump
at the conclusion that something like
$50 times as much gas was burned up
as was actually required, but still, L
think = could be said that at least
19-20ths Of all the gas used in Pitts
burg was absolutely reckless and Grim
inally wasted 1 speak by the card
when I say that in five years P1ttsb burg
burned up enough gas to supply all us
factories and furnaces for the next
century. And dearly now is it paying
In 10
boom cas- was sold in Pittsburg at 2
or cents per LOCO feet. 1t was plped
through the streets and sold in the
houses, at first under contract, at per
haDs not more than twice TINS. Then
when the supply began 70 fall, meters
were put in and the price was put up
to 10 cents, then to Is, then to 20, and
now it is so high that produced gas is
able to compete with it.
What is true of Pittsburg is true of
hundreds of other localities. The town
Of Findlay, o., sprang from 5000 to
10000 in two years. There, you know,
they struck the greatest gas we'll ever
known First came the famous kark
well. whose flow ranged around 10000
coo or u, 000,0 900 feet per day, and then
a still larger one whose flow of SO,OOO,-
coo feet at first, was 100000 feet when
it settled down to steady work. Con-
was literally so much gas that the peo-
pie did not know what to do with 1t,
and then remember that for Ions
time it was thought the flow would last
forever. Here you have all the condi-
lions for waste in the most reckless
fashion.
AS soon as drilling for gas became a
regular industry the cost of the wells
was brought down to a minimum, and
Mo vz-H
.'wild-catter' could not go and raise
money to drive hole. The cost of the
wells ranged from 800 to $500, in
the neighborhood around Pittsburg,
where it was necessary to go down
! 800 to 2SO0 feet AS you went west
ward. tits steadily declined so that in
many localities in Ohio and Indiana,
the cost of a well was not over $1,2OO
and S1,5eO, and around Erie and Buff
falo only $500 or $1,000.
GAS TORCHES FOR FARMS.
At this rate it was often cheaper to
drive a well than to lay even a short
pipe line to one already in existence.
In fact, in some localities, every
farmer was his own gas company. Out
in Indiana, there were four farmers
who put down a well for 81, 300 that
supplied them with all the fuel they
could use for heating their houses and
running their farm machinery and left
enough over to light a torch that IL
Illuminated all four farms. They could
go ploughing and harvesting at night.
In Fostoria and Findlay and Muncie
and hundreds of other places, the wells
were allowed to burn all the time just
for the fine sight they afforded at
night. And it din't even seem worth
while to put them out by day The
roar of those wells still rings in the
ears of the people who heard them,
but in many places the torches are ex-
tinguished and they will never be
lighted again.
You ask why all this reckless waste
was continued even in the face of the
fact that many fields failed after a
short time Well, in the case of the
furnaces, there was for the time a
theory that high pressure was needed
to insure perfect combustion. They
drove the gas into the furnaces with
he velocity of cyclore. The result was
that the great bulk of it was never
burned in the furnaces at all, but
went up in clouds of smoke through
the chimney. Then again, there were
billions of feet of natural gas burned
simply in the manufacture of lamp
black. Nobody ever thought of using
he gas twice, even where it was per-
fectly feasible TO do so.
THE GAS WAS FREE FOR ALL.
Some of the companies tried to stop
his sort of thing, but what could
hey do? Anybody could put down a
we'll, and pipe gas. and the result was
hat the companies were absolutely at
he mercy of the consumers. The lat /
er could do just what they pleased. I
N Pittsburg the Philadelphia COM I
1any alone at one time supplied 1,500 I
million cubic feet of gas per day. And {
t was only one of a dozen or more I
distributors. Most of the gas was used i
lnder contract, or else four or five +
leighboring factory owners would I
combine and build pipe line for |
themselves. Then everyone used Just /
Is much as he could, for fear someone /
Use would get more, and then swore /
hat the other parties were getting all /
he gas. In the case of the furnaces.
many of them were kept at white heat
Ill the time. day and night, whether /