ing 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 control 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 unknown 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 commercially feasible to attempt to correct variation in quality by any artificial 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 number 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 Carnegie Natural Gas Co., in West Virginia, is shown on page 28.

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.

For another operating company representing nearly 40 per cent of the State's production we have the following:

1. Number of acres natural gas land owned to a domestic consumer decreased from 3 acres in 1910 to 2 acres in 1917.

2. The average open flow capacity of new wells drilled declined from 1,200 M1 in 1913 to 700 M in 1917.

1

3. The average annual production to a well declined from 3,600 M in 1910 to 2,200 M in 1917.

VOLUME GAS PRODUCED BY EACH NATURAL GAS WELL IN MILLION CU.FT.

50

100

95

90

80

FIG. 5.-DECLINE IN WEST VIRGINIA NATURAL GAS RESOURCES, BASED ON

DATA COMPILED BY THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

AVAILABLE NUMBER ACRES PER

4. The number of domestic consumers that could be served by each producing well declined from 250 in 1910 to 170 in 1917.

5. Simultaneously with the above decline, the average annual gas service demands to the domestic consumer increased from 110 M

1 The letter "M" represents "1,000 cubic feet," the unit of gas measurement.

cubic feet each year in 1910 to 153 M cubic feet each year in 1917. The demands for West Virginia natural gas are emphasized elsewhere.

NATURAL GAS SERVICE IS BASED ON A NONCREATABLE AND NONREGENERATIVE MINERAL.

The natural gas business is unique in that it is the only public utility service that does not, and in fact can not, create the basis feature of the service that it renders to the public. Manufactured

550

VOLUME IN BILLION CU.FT. NATURAL GAS REMOVED AND USED IN STEEL MAKING

12

1911

20

500

NUMBER OF PRODUCING WELLS

FIG. 6. USE OF WEST VIRGINIA NATURAL GAS FOR STEEL MAKING, BY
UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION.

gas companies merely produce their gas from the raw fuel that they
can buy in the open market; transportation agencies, like railroads.
or street railways, can easily create the motive source of their service;
water utilities have their water supply constantly replenished by
nature; intelligence transmission utilities, like the telephone and
telegraph, can easily create the primary source of their service.
However, the natural gas industry is alone in depending entirely on

the caprice of nature for first the finding, and secondly the continuity of the supply of its primary source of public utility service.

NATURAL GAS SERVICE AND OIL BUSINESS DISTINGUISHED.

Gas can not be gathered, stored, or transported in the same manner as oil. If found in sufficient quantity, it is turned from the well into the line and the pressure at the mouth of the well is the motive power by which it is driven through the line to the consumer miles away. If the pressure at a given well is much below that in the line with which it is connected, the gas from that

FIG. 7.-DECLINE IN NUMBER ACRES AVAILABLE NATURAL GAS LAND RESERVED
FOR EACH NATURAL GAS WELL OF THE UNITED FUEL GAS CO.

well can not enter the line, but will be driven back by the superior force it encounters at the point of connection. For this reason, a well, producing gas in sufficient quantity to be profitably utilized, if there was a market for it near at hand, may be entirely valueless if its product must find a market at a distance too great to justify its transportation by a line of its own. In an oil district each well, no matter how large or how small its product may be, is separately operated, and a well may be profitably operated so long as its yield

pays more than the cost of producing the oil. In a gas district this is impracticable. The product of many wells is gathered into one line, so long as the pressure is sufficient. When the pressure in any one falls below the standard necessary for purposes of transportation, that well must be turned off. Its product can not be transported separately,' and unless it can be used near by, it is valueless. (Pennsylvania Supreme Court: McKnight versus Manufacturers Natural Gas Co., 146 Pa. St., p. 185.)

DRYING NATURAL GAS.

Natural gas as defined on page 10 is made up of a mechanical mixture of condensible vapors and permanent gases; the condensible

constituents consist of gasoline vapor and water vapor. In the transmission of the gas, due to changing temperature and pressure

1 Gas compressors can, of course, be installed so as to increase the pressure of the gas to permit its delivery into a line. The operating cost of this, however, may be much more than the market value of the gas. This, of course, is a very pointed illustration of the fundamental fact that in order to make gas conservation possible it must be made worth saving.