34 
BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
ice to their patrons. In West Virginia the total production is deliv- 
ered as follows : 
Per cent. 
Utilities - 82 
Small producers, with no public utility duties 13 
Carbon black manufacturers 5 
100 
Experience has many times shown that satisfactory continuous 
service to the consumer can be rendered only when the production, 
transmission, and distributing features are properly coordinated. To 
subordinate the transmission side of the business to either the pro- 
ducer’s or the larger industrial consumer’s interest is indefensible. 
NATURAL GAS DISTRIBUTION. 
NATURAL GAS IS A SERVICE, NOT A COMMODITY. 
The furnishing of a service, rather than the delivering of a com- 
modity or product, is the dominating feature of the natural gas busi- 
ness. To consider the gas merely as a commodity is fundamentally 
wrong. When a natural gas utility prospects for, finds, and reduces 
the fugitive, wandering and uncontrolled natural gas to possession, 
and then converts this crude natural gas — made up of a mechanical 
mixture of permanent gases and condensible vapors — into a con- 
trolled and usable service delivered to the consumer’s fixtures, usually 
many miles from the gas field, the service features pertaining to the 
method and manner of delivery, and standing ready to serve are of 
much more importance than the product or commodity. 
The difference between rendering a service and marketing a com- 
modity is an important one. The commodity may be manufactured at 
a uniform rate of production and then placed in storage until it can 
be sold to advantage, while a service must be used at the moment 
it is offered or it will become forever useless. The load factor data 
on page 35 emphasized, first, the erratic nature of natural gas loads 
and, secondly, the potential opportunities for rendering service that 
can never be used. 
WHY GAS CONSUMERS USE MORE NATURAL GAS THAN MANUFACTURED GAS. 
The average consumption in M cubic feet of natural gas for all 
the domestic natural gas consumers in the United States is 100 M 
cubic feet by each domestic consumer annually. The consumption 
data for Charleston, Huntington, and Louisville, Kentucky, is shown 
in graphical form on pages 35 and 36. 
The average of 682 manufactured gas companies, as reported in 
Brown’s Gas Directory, was 22 M cubic feet of manufactured gas 
to each domestic consumer a year. The actual average annual con- 
