The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-08-29

ger of being drowned out with salt wa
ter, or of caving from quicksands.
The recent discovery of natural gas at
Fayette was made in the Sipsey valley,
at the extreme limit of this Appalachian
formation, and where the Sipsey river
has washed away the outcrops of the
Warrior coal measures, leaving a deep
valley between the spurs of the noun
tains. The first well was drilled in the
Sipsey valley three miles east of Fayette.
The strata pierced in drilling consists
of alternating layers of shale and sand
stone, and tight, sticky clay, ideal con-
ditions for the accumulation of oil and
gas. Gas was struck at a depth of 1900
feet. 1t Is estimated that 100000 cubic
feet of gas per day can be furnished
from the four wells now completed. The
gas is pure and free from sulphur.
In all former attempts made in Alabama
to open up the oil field by drilling and
testing 1t has been done cheaply with
crude machinery and inexperienced drill
ers, and while oil or gas has always been
found no one has yet penetrated the real
oil strata which lies at a lower depth
than the gas. Lack of capital and many
other causes have hitherto stepped In
and prevented the full development of this
Alabama oil field.
The Providence Oil and Gas company,
who found the natural gas in Fayette,
are QO1n Btne right III putting QOWn
their mammoth drill to test for oil west
of the gas wells, and with this improved
machinery and experienced men behind,
success is assured. Seven new companies
have been incorporated and equipped with
the best machinery and men with capital
and energy enough that will insure the
full development of the oil and gas field
or northwestern Alabama.
AS natural gas has been found in heavy
A 1t o..1
we are waiting developments in oil, it
must not be forgotten that natural gas
is an evaporation or distillation from oil,
and that in the great gas fields of In
diana for a long time no oil was found.
Eventually the very highest grade Oh
was found under the natural gas field.
bearing this in mind send the drill deep
for best results in Alabama.
1t is perhaps not generally known that
long before any oil was discovered in the
northern states Alabama was producing
rock oil and selling it. In an old file of
the London (England) Mining Journal.
dated 1905 1t was stated that rock oil of
wonderful properties was being used and
sold by the Alabama Indians, and that
they procured 1t from the rocks and
springs in the Cetace valley. There are
many of these places In Alabama which
the Indians used to call medicine rock
the present day call tar springs and
which are really nothing more or less
than crude petroleum forced through the
crevices of the rocks by the pressure of
the gas beneath 1t.
The late Prof Reuben Carroll, who
was known as the foremost scientific oil
expert of his day, made a professional
survey of the southern states before
single oil or natural gas we'll had been
drilled south of the Mason and Dixon
line. and his report then was that the
southern states would eventually prove
richer In oil than any of the then pro-
ducing oil fields of the north. Professor
Carroll later located and drilled oil wells
at Glasgow, Barren county, Kentucky.
and he and his associates built the first
refinery and put in the first pipe lines
south of the Mason and Dixon line. When
Professor Carroll made his survey of Ala
hama In 1898 he said: LAS to oil she has
not vet begun to develop her resources,
but that oil In lmitless quantity will be
found there is just as certain as that coal
in limitless quantity is already found
there. for the same conditions that pro-
duced coal also produced oil. They are
the products of the carboniferous age, and
for the very same reason they exist to-
gether in Alabama and in like proportion
as in Pennsyl<enia. Nature is uniform in
all her work
New Decatur August 20, 1870.