CONSERVING TUSCALOOSA GAS

Not a single resource in history has ever "run out;" it just became harder to find, and the price went up until a more economic resource replaced it quite often after the high price of the original resource had stimulated exploration and research.

Technically, natural gas is no different; but alternative resources (such as gasification of coal and organic production of methane) have no chance of becoming competitive while controls keep the price of natural gas artificially low.

Besides, natural gas is nowhere near running out, it is simply being kept in the ground by the government's gas pricing policy: to Algeria and the sheiks of Araby any price they ask; to the US producer $1.47 per Mcf for all interstate sales. That policy is at long last about to be changed: President Carter has proposed to slam on price controls on sales within a state as well.

We have already reported on the possibilities of gas in geopressurized water along the Gulf Coast from Mexico to Mississippi (May 1977). Meanwhile, other sources have been discovered or reconsidered.

In Louisiana, on the northern edge of the geopressurized zone, and evidently established at roughly the same time (65 million years ago before man, but after the dinosaurs) a rich gas producing belt has been discovered in the Tuscaloosa Sand geological formation. The belt runs east from the Texas border to north of Baton Rouges where it turns southeast and continues well into the Gulf north of the Mississippi Delta. This gas is not dissolved in water, but it lies four miles deep, four times the depth of the average US well. Hidden at this depth below a layer of sandstone (which masks the response to seismic waves sent down by exploration crews), the field escaped discovery until last summer, when Chevron struck the gas in two places - one of them a gas gusher bursting forth at 14Q million cft per day, as crews found out 6 weeks later when they were able to measure it. When they first struck the gas, it blew out everything including the blowout preventers. That was on August 13; it took until November to stop the gas and begin mounting proper wellhead equipment. The well will go on stream in 1978 with 20 million ctf per day, enough to supply more than 60,000 American gas heated homes. One of the unusual features of this well is that it will make money for its owners even at the presently controlled price of gas.

That is not so for most potential wells in the area. Drilling gas wells to a depth of 20,000 ft into the Tuscaloosa sand costs $5 million, and since almost 4 out of 5 drilled holes are dry, that makes about $25 million per successful well.

The reserves in the formation are estimated at 3 trillion cf (total US natural gas reserves, including Alaska, at the beginning of 1977 were 216 trillion cf). But at $25 million a well, the controlled price of gas will yield a profit only for the gushers, and most of the gas will be conserved for future generations.

So will the gas that was not used when schools and factories were closed last January and two million people were out of work.

Come to think of it, every premature death conserves 91.5 Mcf of natural gas for every year that the victim might have lived. Let's hope Nader's Konservation Korps won't find out, if it ever comes into being.