THE FUTURE OF NATURAL GAS
Not long ago the Natural Gas Association of America
held an annual convention in Cleveland, and in his speech,
President H. A. Wallace made some very interesting re-
marks on the future of natural gas. from which the following
yuotations are made:
{ have already remarked on the fact, known to you all,
that the natural gas industry is entering upon an era, not of
decline, but of transition. There should be nothing surpris-
ing or alarming to us in the fact that the reserves of natural
gas in the United States were bound to have a limit, no mat-
ter how remote that limit might at one time have seemed
to he
And depletion of those reserves, however steadily it may
be progressing, has by no means gone so far that there is not
ample time available for those natural gas companies which
rave used adequate prudence and foresight in the manage-
ment of their properties to take the steps which. it is already
~lear. the situation will require.
First of those steps, in my opinion, is the education of the
public in all communities which we serve, to a realization of
the facts of the situation as they are known to us. I have al-
ready alluded to the splendid work of the Publicity Com-
mittee, but this is a task which can not be too thoroughly
performed, and it is also a task that in a sense, in any public
utility such as ours, is never completed. We cannot hope to
pass successfully through the period of transition without
public support, and public support can only be gained and
aeld by thorough education of our communities on the in-
evitable increase in the cost of service which changing condi-
-1ons will entail.
We must remember that the lack of public appreciation of
-he value of natural gas was responsible for the great waste
n the past which brought about the early depletion of many
once valuable fields. It is doubtful if, even today, any great
proportion of the lay public appreciates the true cost of nat-
ural gas service, involving such elements as the necessary
