The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958 Page: 331
591 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Oil Industry in Texas since Pearl Harbor
In the years immediately following the war, advances in gas
conservation in Texas paralleled, if indeed they did not exceed,
the advances made in oil conservation during the early i930's.
Alarmed by the evident wastage of untold power through the
flaring of tremendous quantities of gas, particularly casinghead
gas, Governor Beauford H. Jester appointed a committee to in-
vestigate the matter and report on it. That committee, under the
leadership of William J. Murray, Jr., was composed entirely of
engineers from the oil industry. Following the committee's report,
and as a result of the conditions set forth, the Railroad Commis-
sion issued a call for oil and gas operators in the eleven districts
of the Commission to meet and consider with the Commission
the problem of gas flaring as it was then being practiced. This
step marked the transition from the old era, when a well was not
considered to be a high ratio one unless a four-inch gas riser could
be heard screaming for three-quarters of a mile, to the new in
which maximum utilization is made of all gas.
The first of the hearings was held in Corpus Christi on Feb-
ruary 6, 1946, and following further investigation the landmark
order of the Commission in the field of conservation of casinghead
gas was issued on March 17, 1947. This order applied to the
Seeligson Oil Field of Jim Wells and Kleberg counties where some
thirty-five to forty million cubic feet of gas were being burned
daily in flares. The order set forth certain beneficial uses for gas
and stipulated that unless the gas produced in the field should be
so utilized it was not to be produced. Paralleling the course of
early oil conservation orders, legal proceedings against the Com-
mission and its order followed immediately. The order was
stricken down in the trial court but was supported by the Supreme
Court of the state which held, in effect, that the Commission had
the statutory authority to enter and enforce such an order, and
that it would stand if the fact situation on which it was premised
showed that the waste it sought to prevent was preventable. Fol-
lowing these initial steps, and after additional hearings on specific
fields where large quantities of casinghead gas were still being
flared, the Commission entered orders similar to its Seeligson
order on sixteen such fields in November of 1948. Again court
action followed, but the net results are considered to be a general
achievement of the conservation sought since the volume of gas331
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958, periodical, 1958; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101164/m1/409/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.