The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981 Page: 296
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
tubing. The tubing is held in another set of pipes called the "casing."
At the top of the well, a metal device called the "casinghead" connects
the casing and the tubing. When oil arrives at the mouth of the well,
the associated gas dissolved in it escapes into the casing and out of the
casinghead. It is therefore called "casinghead gas." 10
For the casinghead gas that was extracted with oil in the 1930s, the
prospects for productive employment were even less than for unassoci-
ated gas. Its rate of production could not be controlled, for it was an in-
escapable by-product of oil extraction. Because its supply was dependent
on the demand for oil, it was unattractive to industrial customers, who
preferred to contract for a steady, predictable supply of unassociated
gas. The market, which was weak for unassociated gas, was thus prac-
tically nonexistent for casinghead gas. To put it back into the ground
was expensive. As a result, casinghead gas was almost invariably
flared."
The combination of low gas prices, the technology of condensation,
and the uncontrollable nature of casinghead gas production caused a
waste that staggers today's imagination. There are no reliable figures on
the total volume of gas dissipation in the industry's first seven decades
after 1859, but it must have amounted to dozens of trillions of cubic
feet, as drillers in oil field after oil field vented or flared the entire ac-
cumulation of casinghead gas, and as stripping plants in unassociated
gas fields utilized only a tiny proportion of the resource.12
The waste in the nation's petroleum fields in the 1930s and 1940s
continued apace, especially in regard to casinghead gas. As Texas pro-
duced the most oil and gas, it was the scene of the greatest despoliation.
According to many accounts, motorists could drive for hours at night
in parts of the state in those years and never have to turn on their auto-
mobile lights, because the casinghead flares illuminated the country-
side. Miles away from any major oil field, newspapers could be read
easily at night by the light of these flares.13
Historian Maurice Cheek estimated that in 1934 roughly a billion
cubic feet of unassociated gas was stripped and flared daily in the Pan-
10Zimmermann, Conservation, 56-57.
11Ibid., 244; Stockton, Gas in Texas, 231-236.
12Gerald Forbes, Flush Production: The Epic of Oil in the Gulf-Southwest (Norman,
1942), 14o-148; Beaton, Shell, 131; Stockton, Gas in Texas, 233-235.
18Interviews.296
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 84, July 1980 - April, 1981, periodical, 1980/1981; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101225/m1/344/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.