[Newspaper]
Publication: The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette
Cincinnati, OH, United States
vol. 45, no. 355, p. 12, col. 5-7
NATURE’S GAS LABORATORY
HOW IT IS REVOLUTIONIZING
MANUFACTURING.
MUST ALL OUR IRON AND GLASS MEN
GO TO PITTSBURG?
WHERE CINCINNATI SEEKS HER NATURAL
GAS SUPPLY.
WHAT IT WILL COST TO GET IT.
A Commercial Gazette Commissioner Travels
a Thousand Miles to Solve the Problem.
The First Installment of His
Interesting Report.
Special to the Commercial Gazette.
WARFIELD, MARINT COUNTY, KY., September 17. — The utilization of natural gas, both for manufacturing purposes and domestic fuel, which has taken place upon so grand a scale in various localities, but above all others at Pittsburg, has presented to the industrial world a problem utterly new, and one of proportions so grave as to threaten a complete revolution in quantities hitherto permanent. Cincinnati, in common with other industrial centers, has turned her attention to it with a feverish anxiety, seeking to learn whether its importance is as commanding as common report makes it, and whether, if so, she may obtain natural gas for her own purposes. The Commercial Gazette, recognizing the widespread interest in the subject, detailed myself to investigate both the general question and the particular locality toward which Cincinnati capital is directing its search. To present, as briefly as is compatible with clearness, the results of this inquiry — an inquiry covering much reading, many personal interviews, and hundreds of miles of travel by rail, by boat, and in the saddle — is the purpose of this letter.
Simply to outline all of interest in the brief history of this movement would require a volume; and such extended treatment is, of course impossible here. The valuable pamphlet of Prof. McMillan, the intellgent [sic] intelligent articles of Prof. White, of the Virginia University, and the later descriptions of Prof. Orton, the Ohio State Geologist, together with current newspaper articles on the Pittsburg situation, are suggested to such readers as wish to exhaust the literature the subject. Some brief presentment of its general importance is, however, necessary to the understanding of what follows; and in getting at an accurate idea of this one is impeded by the tendency to exaggeration on the one hand, and to diminution on the other. Such localities as Pittsburg, for example, which have the gas in abundance, are prone to assure the world that no general manufacturing, where great heats and large consumption of fuel are required, can longer be profitably in localities which have it not; and such latter localities are equally vigorous in the assurance that there is nothing much in the new fuel after all. On the one hand, we are told that all the iron industries of Cleveland, and all the glass manufactures of the country must go to pieces or go to Pittsburg; and upon the other, we are assured that the Pittsburg gas flow will, like most of the flowing oil wells, prove of brief duration, and should not be considered as an important factor in the manufacturing situation. Amid this conflict of claims I find subject for grave thought in the personal assurance given me by manufacturers of the class mentioned, in localities where gas has not been found, that if the Pittsburg flow proves permanent they must find gas themselves — must go where the gas is or must abandon business — that they can not compete with the Pittsburg situation it it continues.
Some individual illustrations will throw brilliant light upon the foregoing declaration. One of the leading — perhaps the leading — glass manufacturers of Pittsburg, who owns his own gas well, informed me that he could not estimate the annual savings to him, of gas fuel over coal at less than [dollar:$50,000]. A part of this saving is in the cost of fuel. Another part lies in the fact that the gas makes no cinders, while the removal and transportation of the cinders made by coal fuel costs him from [dollar:$3,000] to [dollar:$4,000] a year. Still another saving is in labor. The coal-burning furnace requires two coal handlers at [dollar:$17] a week each; the gas furnace requires none — there is no firing up, no shoveling in of fuel. But perhaps the most important individual saving is in the life of furnaces. The glass furnace, requiring heat of from three thousand to four thousand degrees, burns out, under coal and the accompanying blast, in about a month; with gas fuel they have lasted, comparatively uninjured, for six months. It has also been widely stated that the gas makes better glass than coal. Inquiry fails to sustain this claim; there is nothing in it, for in the glass process the flame does not touch the contents of the crucible, and its character can not affect it. In the iron manufacture the flame and the molten ore are mingled; and the claim of better iron from the use of gas is here fully sustained.
Mr. Everson, one of the foremost iron manufacturers of Pittsburg, said to me: "In estimating the advantages of gas manufacture, I waive out of view the saving on labor, great as it is; I Waive out of view the saving on fuel, great as it is. It is the better quality of the iron and the greater quantity of the yield that most concern me. With coal fuel the iron is inevitably impregnated with impurities that have to be gotten rid of at great expense in later processes, nothing of this. Again, with the necessary blast, so large a proportion of the iron with which the furnace is charged is blown out of the chimney that you would fancy me dreaming if I gave you the real figures. There is no such loss with gas."
I said to Mr. Everson: "I see that the giant clutch of the Standard Oil Company is already on most of the gas wells, and that they are consolidated into a United Company. Will they not force the cost up to as near the coal level as they dare, and thus reduce the margin of saving to an inconsiderable minimum?"
"Something of this kind," was his reply, "is very likely to take place as to those who do not own their own private wells; but, even then, it can not destroy the most important advantages of the gas. If the coal companies were to lay coal beside my furnaces, free of charge, should still use gas at any reasonable figure, if I could get it, and this because of the better quality and greater yield of the iron. Our furnaces, too, will last from one to two years longer with gas than with the coal; and there is no getting 'sick,' or chilling, with gas for fuel. Under the coal and blast process a thoroughly chilled furnace sometimes costs as much as [dollar:$10,000] to clean out."
These, to be sure, are Pittsburg stories; but the most careful examination which I have been able to give to the subject sustains their general accuracy. Other illustrations of the comparative value of natural gas, in manufactures requiring great heat, will crop out, from time to time, in the general narrative which is now resumed.
The little village of some nineteen families, whence this letter is dated, is a score of miles from anywhere. The stepping-off place is Peach Orchard, on the Chattaroi coal road, and this is twenty miles beyond. From Ashland, Ky., you run up the Big Sandy, by the Chattaroi, some forty-seven miles. At Catalpa, twenty-five miles from Ashland, you pass, in sight of the cars, the derrick where Higdon, of Cincinnati, is searching for either oil or gas. Back of him, some twenty miles, on Blaine Creek, Vincent and Northrup (the latter Receiver of the Chattaroi road) are boring two wells for oil. A few miles beyond Catalpa is the well known village of Louisa; and a few miles beyond that you pass the West Fork of the Big Sandy. Then you push on, through coal-mining regions, to Peach Orchard. When I left Cincinnati my objective point of Warfield, in Martin County, was twelve miles from Peach Orchard. When I reached Ashland, it was sixteen miles. When I got to Peach Orchard it was twenty-one miles. When I had ridden, on a bucking horse, over the intervening hills and ruts, it had grown to a thousand miles. In the process of coming and going I wore out the seat of that garment, unmentionable to polite ears, which lies between the pantaloons and the flesh. I had thought to put this loss in my expense account, but the difficulty arose that no damage could be shown either to the exterior or the interior, and that the presumption was decidedly against injury to an intervening substance. It was a stern experience.
Facing the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy, and looking across it to the Virginia shore, lies a charming little plateau, backed on the Kentucky side by hills and extending along the stream some two miles. At its eastern end lies the village of Warfield a mile and a quarter up the fork is the Barrett gas well. Directly across the stream, in Virginia, and less than five hundred yards distant, is another gas well. It is to these that the attention of Cincinnati capitalists is directed; and it was these that I came to examine. Several years ago, and before natural gas was much thought of, the Barretts, father and two sons, in connection with Cincinnati capital, of which Mr. Sibley and his son-in-law, Mr. Benham, were proiminent factors, entered into a combination to develop coal and mineral lands in this locality. They organized a stock company with a paper capital of [dollar:$1,000,000]. They set apart, still on paper, [dollar:$100,000] as a working capital. Still later they created a bonded debt of [dollar:$30,000], and placed their bonds. This debt is all they have, and they have nothing to show for it save their land. Their land — with some squatters on it who question title — has a front of seven and a half miles on the Tug Fork, and extends backward, ranging in width, but never less than five miles broad, and including some twenty-five thousand acres. After they had acquired title there came along the "Nickel-plate Oil Company," mostly made up of Kanawha Falls capital, who leased of them ten thousand acres for ten years, of which seven years is yet to run. This oil company leased, also, on the Virginia side of the creek, opposite the Barrett property. In the lease of the property on the Kentucky side gas privileges were reserved to the Barrett Company.
This oil company, under the engineering supervision of Mr. Allen (who is now in charge of the works of Vincent and Northrup, before mentioned), sank the well on the Barrett property before described, being a mile and a quarter up the Tug Fork from Warfield village, and some two hundred yards from the stream. They went down, with a five and a half inch bore, just thirteen hundred feet, and there, on the upper edge of the limestone stratum (this last-mentioned fact should be fixed in the reader’s mind) they struck natural gas in such vast and irrestrainable quantities as to blow all their works out, and to force them to abandon the well. They then moved across the creek to the Virginia side, some five hundred yards distant, and tried again. Here they went down thirteen hundred and fifty feet, going through the limestone stratum (note this fact also), and there striking gas in quantities almost, if not quite, equal to the well on the Kentucky side, which here, also, obliged them to abandon the well. The gas in the well on the Kentucky side was struck in December, 1883, that on the Virginia side about a year later. My investigations lead me to the thorough conviction that it is within the truth to say that these two wells are the greatest producers of natural gas of any that the world has ever known.
By reason of experience gathered from the well in Kentucky, that upon the Virginia side was never lighted. It was fenced away from the intruder, and has continued for nearly year to pour its terrific volume of gas in the air. But the Barrett well was lighted very soon after its discovery. It shot up a column of flame eighty feet high, burning up everything about it, and illuminating all the surrounding country for tens of miles. Its force was and is prodigious — so great as to drive the flame itself up a distance of twenty feet from the orifice. A bar interjected close to the mouth and held there by the combined exertions of twenty men, would bring the flame down to it: but when removed the margin of flame would go up again some score of feet, the gas, inflammable as it is, being unable to burn nearer the orifice, by reason of the terrific pressure and the inconceivable speed of the moving particles. Such scientists (many of them eminent) as have been to the well, variously estimate the pressure of its gas at from four hundred to seven hundred pounds to the square inch. The average estimate would be about five hundred pounds. It is the careful estimate of those best informed that each of the two wells is pouring out, and has been pouring out, since its birth, gas whose fuel capacity is equal to the daily consumption of forty thousand bushels of coal. I had a long and very interesting talk with an old resident of Martin County, who was an artillerist in the army of West Virginia, and who was on his way to the Portsmouth reunion. He was in nowise interested in either of the properties concerned, but had been a frequent student of both wells. "In judgment," said he, "the gas pours from those wells with a velocity equal to powder from the mouth of a cannon. I have fired a thousand guns, by day and by night, and have made the subject of powder velocities a special study. That Barrett well shoots out its gas as fast as any gun I had could shoot out its blast at the muzzle."
Rival interests — men who expect to find gas in their own wells nearer the market-tell me that the flow of gas in the Barrett well has sensibly decreased since its discovery. My own investigations negative this claim. That the visible flow is less is true, but I find these reasons for it: The intense heat of the conflagration consumed the derrick and all surrounding machinery, melted the casing of the well, opened up great fissures in the ground, and destroyed adjacent corn crops. By reason of the latter offense its owners were forced to extinguish the fire, which work was accomplished only after long essay and with infinite difficulty. It results that the gas, now unlighted, pours out of many orifices instead of one, and that its force is less concentrated. Another natural cause for check to the visible volume is that the flow of saline water incrusts on the lower portions of the bore and obstructs it. Still another reason will make itself manifest in the next paragraph. But, taking all together as carefully and coolly as I could, I find no evidences of improvement in the gas supply during the nearly two years in which it has been pouring out fuel at a rate equivalent to the consumption of forty thousand bushels of coal per day.
A brief discussion, historical and geological, is here necessary. This region on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy has been noted for displays of natural gas from the earliest history of the country, and a hundred years before that article was thought of as a factor in economic problems. The stream in front of what is known as the Barrett property has always bubbled up, at intervals, with escaping gas, which would burn for awhile upon the application of a match. Just across, on the Virginia side, is what is called "The Burning Spring," which will shoot up a ten-foot flame on the same temptation. In his report of a survey of Virginia, made by Captain Washington, afterwards the Father of his Country, this burning spring is graphically described, and the description given by him more than a century ago, stands good to this day. There has been no change in the flow of gas. The utterances of the geological sages next demand attention. In the location of coal mines, or in the location of oil wells in well defined oil districts some of the professional geologists have been remarkably successful. In the last-mentioned particular, Prof. White, of the University of Virginia, whom I met prospecting about the Big Sandy region, has established the reputation of an almost unfailing prophet. Given a well known oil-bearing region, he searches for what is known as a geological "arch" — a general upheaval of the strata in the center, without breaking. Here, he says: "If you locate your well at the base of the arch, you will get a pumping well. If you locate half way up the arch, on either side, you will get, for a time, a flowing well, by reason of the pressure of the material-accumulated in the higher portions of the cavity." In the selection of such localities he and others like him have had a very noticeable measure of success; but, take them out of well defined oil regions, and set them to "wild catting," and they are no more successful than the veriest tyro. Much more is this so as to the search for gas, which defies all known laws, and all attempted formulae. It is not necessarily the accompaniment of coal or of oil, nor are oil or coal necessarily found with it. And, by reason of its great volatility, it finds its way from stratum to stratum, so that no known location can be definitely fixed upon as its where-abouts.
Prof. Orton, our State Geologist, fancied, after long study, that he had reduced the gas search to a science. When the Findlay people had got to some fifteen hundred feet, he told them that it was vain to go further. "The gas-yielding depth;" he said, "lies just below the limestone stratum, which crops out on the surface at Berea. The dip of that stratum is heavily toward the southward; with you it lies some fourteen hundred feet below the surface. You have got through that without finding gas; and it is utterly vain for you to go any further." Now the Professor had, apparently, abundant data to sustain this proposition. All along the lake shore, where the Berea stratum nears the surface, natural gas abounds in appreciable, if not in copious, quantities. At my boyhood home, in Lake County, there were spots on the surface of Grand River where, with an inverted bucket, and a hole in the bottom we could get a handsome jet of burning gas. In the winter, while skating, we could cut holes through the ice, and get bonfires eight feet high. It was along this stretch of lake shore that the first practical use was made of the stuff. Years ago General Josh Casement, who built twelve hundred miles of the Union Pacific road, and who has now gone over to the Prohibitionists, sank a well on his beautiful premises. Ever since be has lighted his large grounds and furnished fuel to his residence with the product. Further on, at Erie, and at other places, the gas was made of some use in manufacturing pursuits; but, generally, its supply was found too small and too irregular for industrial purposes. But further south, and notably in the Steubenville, the Brilliant and the Wellsburg districts, abundant supplies were found, all following the law of the Berea Dip, as formulated by Prof. Orton. The Findlay people, however, refused to accept the Professor’s advice, and pushed away far into the bowels of the earth, where, to the consternation of the scientist, they struck a magnificent gas supply. And, in a recent lecture Professor Orton does handsome justice to their perverseness in the remark that the Findlay people owed nothing to science — that, with mulish stubbornness, they defied the teachings of science — that they pushed ahead beyond all scientific reason, and found something that science did not dream of.
But, nevertheless, the formula of Professor Orton stands good in the majority of cases, and that brings us to its verification, and to the points reserved above, in the matter of the limestone stratum in the two Big Sandy wells. The dip of the limestone stratum is from Virginia toward Kentucky. In the Virginia well they reached the limestone stratum and bored through it before they reached their gas. In the Kentucky well, across the creek, they found their gas on just touching the limestone stratum, and did not go through it. The Kentucky well is 1,300, and the Virginia well is 1,350 feet deep; but the dip of the stratum this way is such that the Virginia well, as compared to stratum, is about one hundred feet deeper. The conclusion, to my mind, is clear that the Kentucky well did not reach the real gas reservoir, or gas yielding depth, but that, through local fissures in the limestone stratum, they accidentally struck the gas yield at the upper edge of that stratum. If that be so, it follows that these fissures are likely to fill up with saline incrustations and other debris; and that if the Barrett well is ever made a permanent investment it should be sunk a hundred feet deeper, to get through the limestone.
We now come to the efforts of Cincinnati and Covington capital to make use of these two gas well on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy. They are steadily wasting in air fuel enough to run all the iron manufactories and glass works on the Ohio River from Catlettsburg down to and including Cincinnati and Covington. The question is, can the gas be practically brought here? Several steps have been taken to prepare the way, but none toward active operations. On top of the Barrett Company plant, before described, and on top of the ten years’ lease to the "Nickel-plate Oil Company" a charter was procured, at the last session of the Kentucky Legislature, by Barrett and several Covington and Cincinnati parties (among them the Hemingrays, of the Hemingray Glass Works, at Covington), granting the right of way to lay pipes over Kentucky soil between these wells and the Ohio River, and on to Covington. No organization has been effected under this charter, the parties controlling it not being yet quite ready to act. Meanwhile they have secured from the Nickel-plate Oil Company such concessions as prevent their being an obstacle; but some differences of opinion as to control of stock have arisen among the original Barrett Company which are now in the Courts, but which, it is believed, can be readily dissipated whenever the capital necessary to the enterprise is ready to undertake it. To the consideration of the proportions of such an undertaking, and of the obstacles which lie in its way, this letter now directs itself.
Mr. Barrett, and those connected with him, estimate, after consultation with experienced engineers, that they can pipe their gas to Catlettsburg, on the Ohio, in 60 miles; to Ashland in 5 miles more: to a point opposite Ironton, for the supply of that town by mains across the Ohio, in 4 miles more; to a point opposite Portsmouth in 18 miles more; and thence to Covington, feeding also Newport and Cincinnati, in 98 miles more — aggregating, in all, a pipage [sic] pipeage of 180 miles. To these figures, as below Catlettsburg, l have no objection — they are quite reasonable. But, as the result of my observations, I would add ten (10) miles to the first branch, by reason of topographical difficulties. The original idea of the gas-well people was, that they could lay their mains up hill and down hill, and around corners, without any regard to steepness of grade or the sharpness of tangents. Into this error the Barrett party did not altogether fall; neither did they escape an underrating of the factor of friction. While the gas main does not require the evenness of grade or the straightness of line of either the railway or the aqueduct, it must avoid the sharp corners which come from abrupt declivities in either a vertical or a horizontal line, else, in a long line the friction will reduce the pressure and the flow below practical requirement. Therefore, from a study of the topography of the Big Sandy and its forks, I increase the piping to Catlettsburg by ten miles, making it seventy instead of sixty.
But, even with this increase, there is no obstacle to piping to the cluster of manufacturing towns about Ashland and Portsmouth, or even down to Cincinnati, save the expense. From outlying wells to Pittsburg they pipe from fifteen to thirty miles, without serious diminution in the yield, and that in the infancy of the discovery. They made their mains too small in Pittsburg, and did not then understand processes now well in hand for diminishing the friction. One notable well at Butler was piped, by individual enterprise, to Sharpsburg, a distance of sixteen miles. It cost about [dollar:$15,000] a mile — say a total of [dollar:$240,000]. Once completed, it was sold for [dollar:$l,500,000] — a very fair profit. From all the data under my observation I estimate the cost of piping from the Big Sandy wells at a trifle higher than the Pittsburg experience shows, for the reason that, in consequence of the great length of line the pipe must increase in bore as you go along. It should start at ten inches, reach a point opposite Portsmouth at sixteen inches, and reach Cincinnati at twenty-five inches. This will cost to Portsmouth about [dollar:$16,000] a mile, and thence to Cincinnati at about [dollar:$18,000] a mile. This would cost to Portsmouth, in round figures, over [dollar:$1,250,000], and to Cincinnati very close to [dollar:$3,500,000]. Now, the return for this vast outlay of capital, would be far more than sufficient to justify it, if the fixity of the situation could be relied upon. If capital could see clearly that the gas in the Big Sandy wells would continue to flow, as now, for a long term of years, and could see with equal clearness that no other heavily-producing wells would be discovered nearer to the market, there would be no difficulty in getting it to furnish everything needed for the Big Sandy scheme. Those are the two great questions which, together with many surrounding facts and incidents, will be considered in a supplementary letter to appear in to-morrow's impression of this paper. G. P.
