52 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Those activities concerned with the production, transportation, 

 and marketing of natural gas constitute the natural-gas industry. It 

 is largely independent of the petroleum industry, although partly 

 overlapping in production. It consists, in the main, of a large 

 number of independent companies in the form of public-service cor- 

 porations, although some oil companies market their surplus gas. 

 The drilling of gas wells is not essentially different from that of oil 

 wells ; but gas, unlike oil, can not be stored in the field and hence is 

 piped directly to centers of consumption. The gas emerges from 

 new wells under high pressure,^ but as this declines within a com- 

 paratively brief period, the gas field is equipped with compressors 

 which serve to increase the speed and volume of the gas that may be 

 transmitted through gas pipes to distributing stations. 



The wastes in natural gas have been appallingly great in the 

 past, and even now, with some of the most glaring points of waste- 

 fulness corrected, the resource recovery, by and large, is notoriously 

 small. In connection with the production of oil, especially in fields 

 distant from markets, there has been little incentive to bother with 

 the gas, which has largely been looked upon and treated as a waste 

 product, although now known to be necessary to the proper recov- 

 ery of the oil. By means of mud-laden fluid, the gas-bearing beds 

 encountered by the oil-seeking drill may be sealed off and the gas 

 conserved for the protection of the oil beds and for subsequent recov- 

 ery. The gas flowing from the oil-productive stratum along with the 

 oil, particularly in the gusher and youthful period of production, is 

 the casing-head gas from which, since 1910, a growing production of 

 gasoline has been won. 



In the gas fields proper, which produce the bulk of the natural 

 gas supplied to cities, the physical wastes which once prevailed have 

 largely been alleviated by correct practice, but there is still economic 

 loss, felt in prospect by the communities concerned, resulting from 

 the circumstance that small leaseholds and competing wells force 

 hasty extraction. This contributes to a general overproduction, lead- 

 ing to an offering of the surplus gas to industrial plants at low 

 rates in competition with coal. Thus, in 1915, the average price of 

 natural gas to industrial users was 10 cents for each 1,000 cubic feet, 

 as contrasted with the average rate of 28 cents charged domestic con- 

 sumers, a figure none too high as compared with an average rate of 



dining in natural-gas yield have turned to producer-gas made from coal, a less satis- 

 factory fuel because not so high in heat value. (See The Glass Industry, Miscellaneous 

 Series No. 60, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, 1917, pp. 187-188.) The 

 manufacture of carbon black, or lampblack, used in pigments is an industry almost 

 confined to West Virginia, where in 1915 from 19,000,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas 

 there was manufactured 17,000,000 pounds of carbon black, the gas for this purpose 

 having an estimated average value of 2.34 cents per 1,000 cubic feet. 



1 In some instances the pressure is so high, upwards of 1,000 feet to the square inch, 

 that it has to be reduced before piping. In general the pressure of casing-head gas is 

 much lower than that of " dry " gas. 



