46 New YORK STATE MUSEUM 



tricts in Allegany and Cattaraugus counties, the gas being recovered 

 as a by-product and sold to distributing companies who piped it to 

 the towns and villages in the surrounding section. In the nineties 

 of the last century exploration for gas was carried on actively all 

 through the western part of the State and some new fields were 

 discovered, notably in the section along the shore of Lake Ontario. 

 A little later an important field was opened in Erie county, east of 

 Buffalo. The gas pools were encountered in the Medina sandstone 

 and led to the exploration of this formation along the dip in south- 

 ern Erie and northern Chautauqua counties where some very pro- 

 ductive wells have been opened at depths of 2000 feet or more. 



Altogether there are 16 counties in the State that produce natural 

 gas. The principal fields are found in Erie, Genesee, Chautauqua, 

 Allegany and Cattaraugus counties. Outside of these the pools 

 are of subordinate extent and importance, so far as they have been 

 tested, and are scattered rather sparsely over the western section of 

 the State, from Lake Erie and the Niagara river to the east end of 

 Lake Ontario. Exploration of the rocks in eastern New York has 

 been unsuccessful in locating valuable pools. 



The supply of natural gas is derived from several geologic 

 horizons, from the Potsdam sandstone in the Cambric to the Che- 

 mung strata at the top of the Devonic. The more productive 

 formations include the Trenton limestone of the Lower Siluric, the 

 Medina sandstone of the Upper Siluric, and the Portage and Che- 

 mung shales with interbedded sandstones belonging to the Devonic. 

 With few exceptions the gas pools now producing occur in one or 

 another of these formations. 



The oil fields of Allegany and Cattaraugus counties have contrib- 

 uted, and still do contribute, considerable quantities of gas. The 

 pools are found in sandstones at different horizons in the Devonic, 

 such as the Bradford, Kane, and Elk ''sands " of the Chemung. 

 Some of the supply is consumed in the gas engines for pumping the 

 oil, and the remainder is used for lighting and heating in the local 

 towns or is piped to Buffalo. The distribution of the gas is mainly 

 in the control of a few companies, like the Empire Gas and Fuel Co. 

 of Wellsville, the Producers Gas Co. of Olean, and the United 

 Natural Gas Co. of Oil City, Pa. Some of the local towns supplied 

 from the fields are Olean, Andover, Wellsville, Friendship, Hornell 

 and Geneseo. In the northwestern part of Cattaraugus county there 

 is a small field of which Gowanda is the center and which extends 

 across the border into Erie county. The gas is said to occur in the 



