Natural Gas – 100 Years Ago Today, May 27, 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):
- Natural Gas Public Improvements Necessary for Prosperity!
- Gas for the French Big News Across the Channel!
- The Lesson: If Oil Fails, Try Natural Gas Instead!
Natural Gas Public Improvements Necessary for Prosperity!
The enthusiasm for natural gas 100 years ago is obvious from many clips we have included in this series of posts. What’s special about this one, though, is the explicit recognition that natural gas service via pipeline amounts to a public improvement, infrastructure if you will, and worthy of public support.
27 May 1922, Sat The Town Talk (Alexandria, Louisiana) Newspapers.com
This Alexandria, Louisiana news also demonstrates why natural gas was so welcomed. The answer was jobs, jobs and more jobs. A century hence that’s still true! Meanwhile, back across the big pond, in England, note was made of the glories of natural gas just starting to be revealed in places such as Ain, France, across the English Channel.
Gas for the French Big News Across the Channel!
Yes, pipelines deliver prosperity here, there and everywhere, even in France. Note, too, that although the article didn’t get the science precisely correct, the writer did grasp the essential truth that natural gas was much cleaner than the alternative.
27 May 1922, Sat The Gloucestershire Echo (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England) Newspapers.com
Today, of course, the haughty French consider themselves too good for natural gas unless someone else produces it for them. That’s why Russia loved Western fractivists and even financed them, so Vlad could sell them his natural gas without local or US competition. Now, it looks like the French will have to turn to our LNG if they don’t want to be eaten (figuratively speaking).
The Lesson: If Oil Fails, Try Natural Gas Instead!
Back in Upstate, New York, history was revisited to note that where an oil venture once failed, natural gas became the solution, supplying fuel for cooking and lighting, with demand exceeding supply.
27 May 1922, Sat Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York) Newspapers.com
It’s also worth noting the potential use of natural gas as “Motive power for commercial purposes” was also starting to be recognized. We know the rest of the story, of course, and from such humble beginnings has arisen a magnificent industry on which are economy now depends!
The world of Motive Power, aka using natgas as fuel for transportation, will be rocked in the next few years as the Cummins X15N engine – produced right in Jamestown, NY, is rapidly adopted throughout the big truck industry.
While the big rigs will use LNG, normal vehicles will soon be able to go the CNG route (Compressed Natural Gas) as laboratory research has already produced adsorbant material (that’s with a ‘d’, not ‘b’ … adsorbant) enabling fuel tanks to hold Compressed Natural Gas sufficient to travel ~ 400 miles per refill at sub 500 psi.
This low pressure also enables homeowners to fuel their vehicles with residential natgas if the home is so supplied.
New world of innovation is incoming.
FASCINATING!!!