Show A CHANGE OF BASE J The Jfatnral Gas Companies More Their a Derricks Towards the Mountains j I 1 A ravorite Theory o f the Gas Operators is Exploded Ucport of tho Indiana State Geologist Colonel Hunter of the American Natural Nat-ural Gas companr h s an idea Captain Brelsford the Doxey Natural Gas company has also been suddenly struck with a theory of his own Both the natural gas companies have suddenly shifted their base of operations t and moved their derricks across the railway rail-Way tracks nearer the mountains The American company and Mr Doxey have each located the sites for new wells The old wells were abandoned the drillers finding it impossible to go through the quicksand which extends down a thousand thou-sand feet The theory heretofore held by both ih < 2se companies and by most of the gasmen gas-men was that the gas contained in the pockets they struck in the drift had escaped from a larger reservoir that could be discovered by drilling on still deeper After pushing tho drill down to a depth of nearly a thousand feet below the surface th5 casing snapped off forcing the drillers to abondon their wells This theory of finding the true gas reservoir beneath poos found in the superficial drift deposi 5 is exploded by the report of the stat eologist of Indiana Indi-ana and the following extract bears directly di-rectly on this point It is quite often assumed when small pockets of gas are found in the superficial super-ficial drift deposits that gas has escaped t < < from a leak in the rocks below and that I V by drilling in the paleozoic rocks the principal gas reservoir may be found Frequent Fre-quent attempts have been made at various points in Indiana to find the reservoir that was supposed to lie below but in every instance so far that has come to my knowledge the efforts have been futile All tho gas confined in the drift has been generated from decomposed organic matter that was buried in the drift deposits de-posits The same authority puts forward a theory that should it hold good in this valley the largest reservoirs of gas should exist near the mountains or at what was once the shore of the ancient Lake Bountiful I The strongest flows are obtained he says from thestrata of sand that formed the margin of ancient lakes or swamps and which form perfect reservoirs for the j gas Beneath the swamp beds and sand i margins of the lake beds there are usually x thic layers of blue clay which are compact com-pact and wholly impervious to gas oil or water There is no evidence in any instance in-stance that these accumulations of gas in the drift have been derived from any other source than the decomposition of the vegetable matter that was buried in the ancient swamp bed |