Natural Gas – 100 Years Ago Today, April 1, 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):

• Pass Gas! With No Limits!
• If You Don’t Pay, You Don’t Get!
• Head West to Wyoming!
• And, Illinois, Too!

Pass Gas! With No Limits!

Well, this reminds us of the famous billboards erected by landowner groups in Upstate New York a decade ago when they had hopes the hopeless government of the Empire State might pass rules enabling the Southern Tier to save itself with economic development from natural gas development:

01 Apr 1922, Sat The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana) Newspapers.com

Well, that’s funny but this…not so much:

If You Don’t Pay You Can’t Expect the Same Service 

Government always supposes it knows best when the free market actually does, but that’s the world we live in today and have for the past 100 years!

01 Apr 1922, Sat The Times (Shreveport, Louisiana) Newspapers.com

One thing leads to another, though, and the loss of one source of supply forced exploration and development companies to look elsewhere:

Head West to Wyoming!

These companies went west to Wyoming and its still an oil and gas state 100 years later,

01 Apr 1922, Sat The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts) Newspapers.com

But, it wasn’t only Wyoming…

And, Illinois, Too!

It was also in Lee County, Illinois as well:

01 Apr 1922, Sat The Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois) Newspapers.com

The Illinois Oil and Gas Resources mapping project maintains a database of records for over 200,000 Illinois oil and gas wells, believe it or not and some folks are would very much like to drill more but, sadly, live in a “dumpster fire state.”