NATURAL GAS. 
21 
mg from place to place in the underground reservoir, or of being 
drawn off by wells penetrating the natural reservoir at any point 
Therefore, when one owner of the surface overlying the common 
reservoir exercises his right to remove natural gas, the supply in the 
reservoir will be decreased and the amount available to other owners 
of the surface in contiguous territory must inevitably diminish. 
EXTENT OF NATURAL GAS UNDERGROUND DRAINAGE. 
Gas is the most uncertain, fluctuating, volatile, and fugitive of all 
mining properties. It lies far below the surface, beyond the con- 
trol of human will and beyond the reach of any legal process. On 
account of the characteristics just mentioned it is impossible to know 
at what distances drainage takes place. This depends on the un- 
known character of the sand and whether a well 500 feet or 1,000 feet 
distant would drain natural gas from an adjacent tract is largely a 
matter of conjecture and surmise. 1 
QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF NATURAL GAS FIXED BY NATURE. 
The quantity is always uncertain and the quality may vary through 
a small range for the different fields. However, it is not commer- 
cially feasible to attempt to correct variation in quality by any arti- 
ficial means and furnish a gas that is uniform, as may be done in an 
artificial gas plant, for the simple reason that the cost of doing this 
would be much more than the additional worth of the service under 
such conditions. 
SCARCITY OF NATURAL GAS. 
Natural gas is an exhaustible resource that when once used is 
gone forever. Every time a natural gas company sells 1,000 cubic 
feet of gas it is selling a part of its property. Furthermore, the num- 
ber of natural gas consumers is increasing faster than the number of 
producing wells, thus placing an additional burden on each well, and 
the wells that are being drilled at the present time have a lower 
average capacity than wells that were drilled several years ago, in this 
way making less gas available. 
The decline in average acres land held per natural gas well and 
average delivering capacity per natural gas well for the entire State 
of West Virginia is shown on page 22. 
The decline in number of acres for a natural gas well of the United 
States Steel Corporation, operating under the name of the Car- 
negie Natural Gas Co., in West Virginia, is shown on page 23. 
The decline in number of acres natural gas land for each well of 
the United Fuel Gas Co. is shown on page 24. 
1 Paraphrased from Huggins versus Daley, 99 F. R., p. 606, and Hall versus South Penn 
Oil Co., 71 W. Va., p. 82, 
