Natural Gas – 100 Years Ago Today, June 3, 1922!
Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.
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Natural gas news from a hundred years ago offers great perspective for discussing one of the cleanest sources of energy available then and still today.
I thought it might be fun and illuminating to look back 100 years ago at what was happening with natural gas. It is eye opening, given all we’ve learned over the last century and, of course, there is little new under the sun. Consider these 100-year old news items (emphasis added):
- Paper Plant Coming to Town Due to Gas!
- Natural Gas to Gasoline!
- And, Still More on That Natural Gas Gasoline!
Paper Plant Comes to Town Due to Gas (with a Plan B)!
Marshall, Texas got word of a possible paper plant employing 500 people possibly coming to town and the reason was the availability of natural gas. Moreover, there was a backup plan in the event the the gas fields failed 50 years hence:
03 Jun 1922, Sat The Marshall News Messenger (Marshall, Texas) Newspapers.com
Lignite, of course, is brown or dirty coal but no one was much worried about that then. Natural gas was simply more convenient. Whether Marshall, Texas ever got that paper plant is not clear but we do know it never did run of natural gas. Today, in fact, it has numerous natural gas wells producing large volumes of gas.
Natural Gas to Gasoline!
Is it time to revisit this potential given what is happening with fuel shortages caused by the compromised and Incompetent Biden administration?
03 Jun 1922, Sat The Kinston Free Press (Kinston, North Carolina) Newspapers.com
The advantage of natural gas gasoline, of course, is lower emissions and the ability to refine closer to raw product in the the case of Northeastern Pennsylvania, for example. Nacero, anyone?
And, Still More on That Natural Gas Gasoline
Here are additional statistics showing natural gas gasoline was anything but rare in 1922. Indeed, Oklahoma and Texas were producing quite a bit of the stuff:
03 Jun 1922, Sat The Wall Street Journal (New York, New York) Newspapers.com
The circumstances today, of course, are different than 1922, but what happened to this industry? Was it an actual conversion process or simply a case of a byproduct being marketed for another use, hence the term casinghead gas? It doesn’t really matter, does it, because we have the technology to do it efficiently, so let’s do it!
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