102 Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



knowledge of conditions which exist in every oil and gas field, I am 

 sure the quantity will amount to not less than one billion cubic feet 

 daily, and it may be much more. The heating value of a billion cubic 

 feet of natural gas is roughly equivalent to that of one million bushels 

 of coal. What an appalling record to transmit to posterity ! 



From one well in eastern Kentucky there poured a stream of gas for 

 a period of twenty years without any attempt to shut it in or utilize it, 

 the output of which, it has been figured, was worth at current prices 

 more than three million dollars. Practically the same conditions charac- 

 terized the first twenty-five years of Pennsylvania's oil and gas history, 

 and the quantity of wasted gas from thousands of oil and gas wells in 

 western Pennsylvania is beyond computation. In my own state of 

 West Virginia, only eight years ago, -not less than 500,000,000 cubic 

 feet of this precious gas was daily escaping into the air from two 

 counties alone, practically all of which was easily preventable, by a 

 moderate expenditure for additional casing. When it is remembered 

 that one thousand cubic feet of natural gas weighs 48 pounds, and that 

 6,000 cubic feet of it would yield a 42-gallon barrel of oil when con- 

 densed, so that a well flowing 6,000,000 feet of gas is pouring into the 

 air dailythe equivalent of 1,000 barrels of oil, what would our petroleum 

 kings think, if they could see this river of oil (for the equivalent of 

 a billion feet of gas is more than 160,000 barrels of petroleum, and of 

 practically the same chemical composition as benzine or gasoline) rush- 

 ing unhindered to the sea? Would they not spend millions to check 

 such a frightful waste of this golden fluid? And would they not be 

 the first to appeal to the national government for aid in ending such 

 great destruction of property ? And yet because natural gas is invisible, 

 and its waste is not so apparent to the eye as a stream of oil, or a burn- 

 ing coal mine, the agents of these oil magnates have not only permitted' 

 this destruction of the nation 's fuel resources to continue, but they have 

 prevented by every means in their power the enactment of any legis- 

 lation to stop this frightful loss of the best and purest fuel that nature 

 has given to man. 



There can be no doubt that for every barrel of Oil taken from the 

 earth there have been wasted more than ten times its equivalent in 

 either heating power, or weight even, of this the best of all the fuels, 

 and also that much more than half of this frightful waste could have 

 been avoided by proper care in oil production and slight additional 

 expenditures. 



In justice to the great oil-producing corporations, it must be acknowl- 

 edged that they have not permitted much waste of petroleum except 

 what has been sprayed into the air by their awful waste of gas, and also 

 that their handling of petroleum has been from the beginning a model 

 of business economy and management. The great mistake of the oil- 



