NATURAL GAS. 
53 
therefore wasteful method of securing illumination at night but in 
many instances the torches are not shut off during the day. 
6. Offset wells. — The drilling of offset wells is not only frequently 
a waste of capital, resulting from overdrilling, but very frequently 
results in marked waste of gas. This is discussed in further detail 
on pages 55-57. 
7. Improper plugging. — Where a well is abandoned and the cas- 
ing pulled, if the hole is not properly plugged, it may result in the 
ruination of other gas bearing formations by the migrating of gas 
or water from one to the other, or the very great waste of gas leak- 
ing into coal veins or coming up and passing out into the air. 
WELL OPERATION WASTES. 
1. Wasting gas to get oil. — Where oil and gas are found in the same 
field it is quite a general practice for oil operators to blow off the 
gas, that is, waste it, in order to procure the oil. This is the prin- 
cipal cause of the depletion of many gas fields, and is responsible for 
a greater volume of gas waste than probably all other causes put to- 
gether. 
In tests on over 1,000 oil wells in West Virginia it was shown that 
the waste of natural gas of each well was at the rate of 12 M cubic 
feet a day, or 4,380 M cubic feet *of natural gas a well per annum. 
There are at least 16,000 oil wells in West Virginia, and at this rate 
the annual waste from this source would be at least 70,000,000 M cubic 
feet of natural gas, equivalent to about one-third of all the natural 
gas used for domestic -consumption in the United States. 
2. Excessive blowing. — Where wells are blown into the atmosphere 
for water freeing purposes the gas must, of course, be wasted. How- 
ever, in many cases the wells are blown longer than necessary, and in 
others it would be feasible to install siphons for the removal of the 
water so as to curtail this form of waste. 
3. Salt water troubles. — In some instances salt water exists in the 
gas-bearing formation and in others it works in from other strata, 
due primarily to improper drilling and casing methods. This results 
in a large waste of gas when the wells must be watered to free them 
of the salt formation below in the tubing. 
4. Too rapid lowering of the rock pressure. — The irregular or too 
rapid lowering of the rock pressure by exceedingly rapid production 
will always produce undesirable operating conditions, and must ulti- 
mately result in a large waste of the total amount of gas that might 
have been removed with more rational operating methods. 
TRANSMISSION WASTES. 
1. Leakage. — The structural conditions accounting for much of 
the leakage along gas lines are discussed in detail on page 58. The 
