These Are My People.

that looks like the spot over there how about it we going to bring something up I got to hunch this is going to be a big one the way I figure 47 more Wells and another [clears throat] pipeline's all wrapped up we'll have to add some compressor horsepower here to take care of the added industrial load at this point up North Centerville how's your pressure raise your line T discharge to 700 lb okay this cing wants line te discharge raised to 700 Unit 14 to dispatcher over dispatcher to Unit 14 come in this is Charlie we just checked the air conditioning installation at 2619 Webster yes the Charlies are the ones you most often meet but all of them the ones you've just seen and thousands more they are the men and women who serve me so that that I can better serve you the way you see me now a small blue flame is probably my most familiar form to you [music] but actually there are some who recognize me as one of the world's most abundant and useful natural resources of course I am natural [music] gas and these are my people [music] [music] each of them working to [music] help bring you the best possible gas service now of course if you want to [music] reach way back into history say about 150 years that [music] wasn't so and since I've brought it up I might as well admit that the people who worked with me back in say 1850 de didn't know much about the uses of natural gas because there weren't any in fact they didn't even know how useful I could be the truth is they weren't even sure of what I was or where I came from but in all fairness to them I should tell you that they weren't really looking for me at all they were [music] in the salt business digging a brine well which was a common thing to do along the banks of the canaa river River in 1815 with their crude spring pole rig they were going down a steady 3 ft [music] per day when on this day they suddenly heard from me when I put on a show like this is it any wonder that the earliest Americans called me a wild spirit and why should these early settlers of the Appalachian Mountains think much better of me but fortunately for me these were a special breed of men tough and imaginative and during the next decade my unexpected appearances from brine Wells throughout Ohio Pennsylvania and West Virginia became so frequent that these Pioneers among my people conquered their fears and invented ways to cope with my rambunctious Spirit soon they had discovered enough about my talents to deliberately drill wells in search of me crudely but effectively they had learned to control me [music] after a fashion transport me through Hollow logs over short distances and use me as a form of Illumination and then one day in 1840 another of my people put me to work for the first time in American [music] industry and in ingenious salt maker bless his heart in Centerville Pennsylvania got the idea that unlike the logs he'd been using for the fire under [music] his bats I didn't have to be cut split stacked or carried and what's more I was there 24 hours a day to boil down the brine in his salt kettles now that the barrier had been broken my people kept finding newer and better uses for me in their Industries [music] on the streets of their towns and cities and in their parlors at first for light and then in the kitchen for [music] cooking as well as smudge-free heat in their homes and if you'll pardon the small boast by the year 1900 I had become a household word so versatile and popular that an entire era is still named after as more people people wanted me they now searched for and found [music] me in great quantities throughout Ohio Pennsylvania and West Virginia here in America's original natural [music] gas land and here the complicated techniques and skills required to bring me from thousands of feet below the Earth were developed and [music] perfected in early days a surface study of the terrain and all too frequently a mere good hunch were all the told a driller where to sink his as well but I have a reputation for elusiveness and then as now [music] hunches were usually not good enough thus around the turn of the century the young men of science joined [music] in the search for me and added a new phrase to the gas industry vocabulary subsurface [music] geology or in pler words the study of the earth and its formations [music] below the surface and uh this gentleman is an enlarged illustration of that sample brought up from 700 ft 300 million years ago it was sediment in a prehistoric swamp now it is porous stone with tiny spaces between its particles capable of containing natural gas as you know gentlemen many millions of years ago chemical and bacterial action converted organic materials deep within the earth into oil and gas then through more millions of years of geological history the gas migrated through the poorest Sandstone layers like water through a sponge and collected in underground Pockets these sometimes occurred in the highest points or anticlines of folded rocks here on an impervious lay of rock the gas was imprisoned to be released only through the wells drilled by modern man I realize of course that this is all very basic and hardly new to you gentlemen but I remind you of it to emphas EMP ize the significance of the subsurface picture we've constructed out of samples taken from our test Wells and these pieces of rock found on the surface some distance away you'll recall that we successfully drilled some good Wells out in the Washington District a few years ago well here are some samples of sandstone we encountered early in the drilling we also got a good record of the rock layers in that area they look like this you see this anticline notice particularly the Sandstone above the producing formation recently one of our survey Crews made an interesting Discovery it found the same Sandstone at the surface in two places about 15 miles from our new gas field now these rocks were in layers tilted like this it looks to us as if the top has been worn off and upward fold of sandstone and what could this have to do with another gas field we think that the gas producing Sandstone under the formation must be folded the same way and there's a chance of another anticline that's it exactly seems like an awful lot to assume just from rocks gentlemen as you know the demands for natural gas are continually going up and up and we can't afford to go on drilling mostly on hunches and hoping for Lucky break I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to test the theories of subsurface geology and now I'm going to ask you to have even more faith in these findings based on what we know for sure and signs of what to expect I'm recommending that we drill our next test well right here and now comes the time when those who would serve me must dare to venture for this is the moment of the big decision financially the r risks are substantial it's never easy for a lone Wildcat driller or a company like this the decision has been made the company will proceed with a new test well as recommended by the geologist and now it's only a question of turning a lot of probabilities into realities because you don't ever really know about finding me until you drill down and get me or get a dry hole for now there was no longer any doubt the new science of gas geology and the men who served it became full Partners on my team and during the years that followed they continually developed newer and more accurate techniques of searching me out they mapped the subsurface with sound waves and seismographs searched for variations in its magnetic field and tested for changes in the pull of gravity to more accurately locate my Fields likely looking spots in America's original natural gas land were explored and developed Millions upon millions of dollars and all the skill and science my people could bring forth went into the battle to keep up with demand but still there was not enough for all those who wanted and needed my services even in the gas land where I was first discovered but in Kansas Oklahoma Texas Louisiana and throughout the southwest great new gas deposits were being discovered and tapped but the Southwest is a long way from America's original natural [music] gas land and there's only one way to transport me through pipelines soon pipelines Spann the country to provide billions of cubic feet of gas for the homes and industries of the nation forming a vast network of nearly a quarter of a million miles of pipe for these two were more of the men who served me rugged skilled determined these were the modern counterparts of our early frontiersmen truly these men did not know the meaning of the word impossible nothing could stop them not mountains rivers or swamps in terms of men machines materials and capital investment the building of these Nation spanning pipelines would be equal by few other private [music] engineering Enterprises so rapidly did my popularity as a an ideal fuel for industry and Home Heating continue to grow that as fast as one pipeline neared completion another was already underway but with this tremendous expansion [music] of my use came another interlocking problem solving this one would need to be a group effort and taking on the challenge were still more of the people in my ever growing family men from the engineering procurement and transmission departments now gentlemen I'd like to review the Crux of our problem with a simple parallel think for a moment of these pipelines as super highways and then visualize a situation where such a highway is jammed to overflowing during the rush hours and only partly used at times it's a reasonable enough parallel when you look at the great seasonal variation in gas consumption which are industry faces every year chiefly because of the tremendous acceptance of gas for home heating winter demands often shoot up as high as 15 times summer requirements to gear our pipeline highway system to Summer demand would make it impossible to serve all our customers on the coldest winter days so obviously that is not a practical solution we have to keep the gas flowing through our pipeline Highway at full volume all during the summer distribute enough for summer needs and store the Surplus as close to the population centers as possible to meet the heavy winter demand as you know that is the subject of this meeting where and how to store the tremendous amounts of natural gas needed to see our territory through a heavy winter only last week I was trying to make clear the enormity of this storage problem to my young grandson and since figures alone especially in the billions don't seem to impress him I resorted to a couple of simple illustrations I pointed out to him that 16 houses on one square block of a residential Community require 2 million cubic feet of natural gas to see them through a typical winter to store that amount of gas takes a tank 200 ft in diameter and over six stories high a city of say 100,000 requires approximately 4 billion cubic feet of gas during a single winter yet to store even one billion cubic feet of gas would require 20 tanks each as high as the Empire State Building therefore storage tanks are not the solution which leads us right back to the original problem where can a sufficient supply of gas to meet our huge winter demand be stored the only possible answer seems to lie in nature itself placing the gas back into its natural Storehouse by pumping it into the same underground formation from which the original gas was withdrawn after all it was held safe here for millions of years throughout the summer we would fill these natural reservoirs from our pipeline system and then during the cold months withdraw the stored gas to supply the heavier needs of the consumer as you all know underground storage in depleted reservoirs has been tried and found practical on a small scale and there's our challenge gentlemen to make underground storage practical on a large scale large enough to meet the needs of our customers during even the severest winter and there it was that simple and that [music] complicated simple because the basic idea was so logical complicated because there were a thousand unknown factors to be worked out now my people rolled up their sleeves and went to work they examined well records of field after field estimated their volume and determined whether the field was actually a closed Reservoir they studied every detail of the gas producing strata in the most promising Fields calculating how fast the gas could be injected and how quickly it might be withdrawn then after seemingly endless and painstaking preparation my people moved into the field they reconditioned hundreds of old Wells installing new casings and connections to with withand the great [music] pressures needed to pump the storage gas and when they were finished my people had met still another seemingly impossible challenge for throughout America's original natural gas land [music] the large depleted Fields found new usefulness as vast storage reservoirs to provide a steady yearr round gas supply for the hundreds of communities in the area and so today with ample Supply and adequate storage the day-to-day [music] challenge for my people lies in the smooth and uninterrupted operation of the immensely intricate system which transports [music] me from well or storage pool to the millions of people who use me as I leave the producing Fields I am carried through [music] pipelines to a compressor station for it takes power in the form of pressure to move me over long distances power supplied at needed intervals by these giant compressors then back through the transmission lines to a measuring and regulating station here every last cubic foot of me is measured before I am allowed to pass on through the transmission lines then on to the point where I am transferred from the big transmission lines and fed into a city distribution system known to my people as a City Gate here the great pressures under which I traveled in the the big pipes are reduced and regulated and then I'm [music] sent on to District regulators and then through the hundreds of miles of pipe [music] which lie under the streets of a city but simply moving me from field to city is only one part of the job for at key points throughout the system my rate of flow is constantly controlled as the demand for my services varies from hour to hour the focal point and Center for all this intricate but vital control is here in the headquarters dispatching room and through the actions of the dispatcher every well compressor station and storage field in the system is smoothly coordinated to the constantly changing consumer requirements it takes years of apprenticeship and more years of practice to properly interpret analyze [music] and act upon this complex pipeline system but science continues to provide better ways and more and more automation is being put to work for me by means of this telemetering [music] system the dispatcher controls dozens of regulators and valves without moving from his chair by the mere push of a button he operates a valve on a line more than 90 Mi away and as if that weren't enough this scientific marble sends in a continuous record of operations from [music] every control Point everywhere I look these days things are automatically done in the engineering department it's the mroy pipeline analyzer that helps my people to solve those naughty distribution problems in accounting the electronic machines seem to eat up facts and figures at jet age speed this one automatically computes and makes [music] out 150 bills a minute for all kinds of users and thus all the facilities of the industry and the energies of all who serve me are devoted to supplying you with A continuous flow of natural gas [music] under all conditions hot or cold that cold weather we've been watching is coming in from the Northwest fast Sunday is supposed to be a nice quiet day in a dispatching office but not when there's a serious cold front moving in okay the chief's on his way over good George looks like we're in for a cold spell right we're packing the line give us 750 lb on the 26 in line okay packing the line in ordinary language simply means filling up the big pipelines to pressure capacity in order to have a maximum Supply available for the increased demand of a sudden cold snap turn them over Joe throughout the system additional giant compressors Now Roar into action to increase pressure in the lines and to pump extra gas out of the storage pools at the dispatching room the arrival of the chief dispatcher crystallizes the strategy with which they plan to meet the increased demand brought on by the cold wve better notify production and transmission superintendents they'll want to have radio equipped trucks and cars available at key points and Fred can we get more gas from the southwest some was available yesterday we're getting an additional 75 million good how about our storage pools we're already withdrawing from all of them number six compressor station which we've had idled is now pumping all right that's about all we can do for now let's sit tight for the time being and keep our eyes on the teletype but what they see coming over the teletype tells them there's no letup throughout the day and into the night temperatures keep on falling steadily by Monday with industrial plants and stores increasing their usage after the weekend cutback the demand for gas is about to hit the Winter's Peak all over the system in Charleston Columbia and Pittsburgh the dispatchers worked around the clock to maintain adequate pressure the pressure on line B4 is holding well we're watching in case it drops how is 62 ditto line 24 down to 29 lb increase your take from Storage pools X6 x58 x59 and the temperatures don't keep on dropping that should see us through cut your discharge pressure 50 PBS and so through advanced planning and the newest technical facilities the Winter's worst is meant but complacence is not among the traits of those who serve me for there are still countless new challenges ahead and still more uses for my talents to add to the 20,000 already in existence the entire house house comes with built-in appliances and aside from the water heater and incinerator in this all gas home you'll have a built-in oven fold away tabletop burners an automatic ice maker refrigerator and best of all yearround gas air conditioning summer Cooling and winter heating for even though you associate me most logically with your homes I have also won quite a name for [music] myself in the exciting New World of petrochemistry where I am used not as a fuel but as a raw material for thousands of useful products such as detergents nylon and synthetic rubber I am equally popular in thousands of manufacturing processes which require a fuel with reliability absolute cleanliness and the ability to deliver controlled continuous heat the very same qualities which make possible my appearance in [music] your homes as the burner with a brain and because you consider me such an ideal fuel the gas companies of the country each year build facilities to serve more and more families and that of course brings us right around full circle [music] to the continuing need for new sources of Supply but where is there left to search the people who serve me have several answers for one right here in America's original natural gas land but at levels far below any ever attempted before drilling here is more than a mile and a half below the surface called The Deep Horizon by the geologists they believe that down there in the Deep Sands reserves of natural gas may be greater than any yet discovered and far out in the Gulf of Mexico still more men of vision courage [music] and determination sought and found tremendous untapped reservoirs of natural gas while deep in the swamplands of Louisiana the latest science ific findings indicate that there are fantastic new fields of the modern fuel natural gas yes my people look to the future with justifiable confidence each of them has his own part in making a complex [music] system work smoothly and efficiently each has an interesting and vital job that makes him more than just the employee of a public utility each knows that his job is important not only to himself but to the community in which he lives I'm truly proud to say that these are my people the men and women who serve me that I may better serve you [music] [music] [music]