Natural Gas

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 news items (emphasis added):

First up among our historic reflections on natural gas this week is this 100 year old news item from the Buffalo Times:

18 Feb 1922, Sat The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, New York) Newspapers.com

Hmm. The natural gas price as of yesterday is $4.72, which is actually quite high in recent terms. It is 28¢ in 1922 dollars, in fact. Natural gas in Pittsburgh then sold for 51¢, which means this commodity has gone down another 45% in price in real dollars over the last century. This simple fact illustrates so much regarding technology and innovation but, especially, the reality that resources such as natural gas don’t run out. This is because, when prices rise, exploration and development becomes more feasible and new resources are found. That’s the shale revolution in a nutshell.

This is further illustrated in the following solicitation from February 18, 1922 that appeared in the British Columbia press, which deals with oil. Notice how the tar sands were then simply viewed as an extra—something that produced oil as one drilled down to the real bonanza. Today, it is often the oil sands that are the big producers.

18 Feb 1922, Sat The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) Newspapers.com

The year 1922 was, indeed, an exciting time for oil and gas and natural gas employees who were even treated to motion pictures extolling the industry’s accomplishments.

18 Feb 1922, Sat Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com

Natural gas was, you see, was the new thing, more than a novelty it had been for decades. It was coming into its own and communities were proud to receive the “modern conveniences.” Filmore, California, was among them.

18 Feb 1922, Sat Press-Courier (Oxnard, California) Newspapers.com

And, it wasn’t just a community or two. It was also entire states and regions that looked on enviously as their neighbors developed oil and gas. Mississippians looked west to Louisiana and said “we want some of that.”

18 Feb 1922, Sat The Vicksburg Herald (Vicksburg, Mississippi) Newspapers.com

And, that’s how things were 100 years ago, today, on February 18, 1922.