THE PASSING OF NATURAL GAS.
[Communicated.]
The passing of natural gas in the United States is a subject which calls for a few words of notice. Its use sprang up suddenly in the last twenty-five or thirty years of this century, and it would almost seem as if its enforced disuse would be coincident with the expiration of the first decade of the new century—at least so we may judge from the report of the United States Geological Survey for 1901. which points to the fact that the natural gas fields are not far removed from total exhaustion. The Pennsylvania field, one of the earliest, if not the very first to be operated, is no longer relied upon to supply the great works which centre round Pittsburgh, and coal is once more resorted to in some places as an adjunct to the gas; in others, as its substitute. In the Ohio field, which originally gave gas under a rock pressure of 480 pounds to the square inch, there is now no rock pressure whatever, and compression is necessary for the distribution of the gas. The original rock pressure of the Indiana field—one of the most prolific of all— registered 325 pounds to the square inch, where as it is now down to an average pressure of sixty pounds, and sixty-six per cent, of the total supply is estimated to have been taken out and consumed. All the fields show loss of pressure, and many of the old gas areas have been practically exhausted.
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