OUR PETROLEUM SUPPLY — MISER 313 



More recently, such maps of Kansas (9), Oklahoma (9), Texas (17), 

 and a large portion of the United States (8) have been published. 

 The deep drilling for oil and gas provides not alone stratigraphic 

 information but also structural data that permit the preparation of 

 subsurface structure maps, both local and regional in character. 

 In the words of R. A. Daly at the banquet of the Geological Society 

 of America in Tulsa, Okla., on December 30, 1931, the petroleum 

 industry has contributed the third dimension to geology. 



DEEP DRILLING AND SEARCH FOR PETROLEUM DISCOVER 

 OTHER MINERAL PRODUCTS 



The petroleum industry, in its addition of this new dimension to 

 geology, has had an unusual oportunity to discover mineral products 

 that lie deep below the surface. Commercially important deposits of 

 five mineral products thus discovered with the advent of deep drill- 

 ing and search for petroleum are natural gas, helium, natural carbon 

 dioxide, potash in New Mexico, and sulfur in the coastal areas of 

 Louisiana and Texas. The five industries centering around these 

 may thus be regarded as quintuplets of mother petroleum in the 

 household of the mineral industry. A few vital and other statistics 

 of interest about each of the quintuplets will be mentioned. 



The commercial utilization of natural gas, one of our principal 

 sources of light and power, dates back as early as 1821 when gas 

 from a shallow well at Fredonia, N. Y., was used in homes in that 

 village. Our present marketed output of natural gas, amounting in 

 1937 to 2,370 million cubic feet, comes from 24 States and is trans- 

 ported through 85,000 miles of trunk lines to consumers in 35 States. 

 The known reserves of this convenient and efficient source of heat and 

 energy are, according to E. W. Richards,^ at least of the order of 

 100 trillion cubic feet. 



Gas wells suitable for producing solid carbon dioxide, known gen- 

 erally as dry ice, have been drilled in Montana, Colorado, Utah, New 

 Mexico, and California; and plants for the manufacture of dry ice 

 from gas supplied by such wells have been constructed in recent 

 years at Wellington, Utah, "Witt and Bueyeros, N. Mex., and Niland, 

 Calif. Dry ice is a convenient refrigerant and is being produced 

 in increasing quantities, owing in part to the growing demand for 

 it by transcontinental and transoceanic shippers. 



Sulfur was discovered on a salt dome at Sulphur, La., in 1865 by 

 the Louisiana Petroleum & Coal Co. while prospecting for oil. Sul- 

 fur production was begun in Louisiana in 1903. To January 1, 1938, 

 41,163,000 long tons of sulfur valued at over three-quarters of a 

 billion dollars has been produced from the cap rock of salt domes on 

 the gulf coast of Louisiana and Texas. Before the development of 



» Personal communication. 



