ago, and I do not believe you will ever find any way to make miners working above these large bodies of gas safe. That is my conviction. Senator PURTELL. Obviously you feel that the applications for gas storage should be denied in that particular case. You at least hope so.

Your testimony was very interesting.

Have you any further questions, Senator Schoeppel?

Senator SCHOEPPEL. No.

Senator PURTELL. Senator Monroney, do you have any questions? Senator MONRONEY. No questions.

Senator PURTELL. Thank you very much, Mr. Woomer.

The next witness is Mr. R. L. Wilhelm, consulting engineer from the State of Ohio.

STATEMENT OF R. L. WILHELM, CONSULTING MINING ENGINEER, ST. CLAIRSVILLE, OHIO

Mr. WILHELM. My name is R. L. Wilhelm.

I am a consulting mining engineer from St. Clairsville, Ohio, and have been associated with the mining of coal for the past 36 years, either as a mining engineer, manager, owner, or in a consulting capacity.

I am appearing here on behalf of Coal Producers' Committee on Underground Gas Storage Safety.

Recently I have become very much alarmed by the fact that the gas companies are storing gas in abandoned gas and oil sands underneath underground mining operations, thus creating a potential hazard for the mines.

Gas and oil, as you probably know, is found by drilling wells down to the sand in which the gas or oil is trapped. Through these wells the gas or oil is removed from the sand.

After these sands have given up their gas or oil, they make logical locations for the establishment of gas reservoirs. Some of the sands are better suited for reservoir use than others, due to their greater ability to absorb and release the gas.

These are not the only sands, however, in which gas may be stored, as one of the large gas companies is now storing gas in a water sand in Illinois.

In Ohio we have some of these depleted gas and oil sands which are located under minable coal seams, and it would only be logical to expect the gas companies to give serious consideration to the use of these locations for gas-storage reservoirs.

The establishment of reservoirs and storing of gas beneath minable coal seams could be extremely hazardous to the operation of mines in the area since there are so many unknown, uncharted, poorly located, or improperly abandoned wells in the State.

In Ohio no records of gas or oil wells were made with the State prior to 1917. It is common knowledge that a vast number of wells were drilled and abandoned previous to that time.

Beginning with 1917 the State of Ohio required that a notice be filed with the division of mines of proposed well locations and a permit was then granted for drilling same. It is quite certain, from information acquired, that in numerous instances the wells were not

drilled in the location recorded with the State, which proves that all the records cannot be relied upon.

An examination of the known gas and oil sands of Ohio will reveal that some of them lie directly below known minable coal seams. I have in mind one of these areas which had been drilled many years ago and since abandoned.

A coal company is now attempting to project a mine into territory which is over this old abandoned area and where numerous wells had been drilled through the coal seam to the gas and oil sands below. The coal company is doing everything possible to determine the location of all wells drilled in that vicinity, and plan their mine accordingly so they will not cut into any of them, recognizing the fact there is a certain amount of danger even though the sand has been depleted of its oil or gas.

The coal company, so far, has been able to locate 195 wells. Of this 195 only 46 were found to be charted with the State. The remaining 149 wells were found only after diligent inquiry and search in the area. The usual procedure being to talk with the oldest residents of the area to see if they could recall of any abandoned wells, if so, the information received usually would be of a general nature and would give only approximate locations. The coal company engineers would then search that area for indications of the well.

In some instances all surface markings of abandoned wells have been completely erased and nothing is left on the surface to indicate the location of the well. In other instances they found some indication such as cleanings from the well or cinders from the drill which led them to believe they were near the exact location, in which case they arranged to leave sufficient area unmined to give adequate protection against cutting into such abandoned well. There is still no assurance that all the abandoned wells have been located.

If a gas reservoir were to be established in depleted sand under the above-mentioned mine, and one of the coal-cutting machines cut or broke into an uncharted well connecting the mine with the gas reservoir below, a sudden inrush of gas would occur which could result in a major catastrophe.

It is not the intent to leave any impression here that would indicate in any way that the gas companies would intentionally do anything to create a mine disaster. Neither do we believe that this committee would want to take action which would create new hazards to the coal industry-an industry already loaded down with safety regulations required because of its natural conditions.

There are nine gas reservoirs established in the State of Ohio and for the most part are outside the limits of the underground minable coal seams. In other words, none of these gas storage reservoirs would interfere with the underground mining of the known coal seams in the State of Ohio.

In view of the facts stated above, it does not make sense for the Federal Government to encourage or facilitate the means by which storage of gas under minable coal seams would occur. This would create a potential danger for the miners working therein.

We are therefore opposed to Senate bill 525 and belief if the right of eminent domain is granted to the gas companies it should be done, not by the Federal Government, but by the various States, where local conditions would receive proper consideration.

Senator PURTELL. Thank you, Mr. Wilhelm.

Do you have any questions, Senator Schoeppel?

Senator SCHOEPPEL. No questions.

Senator PURTELL. Senator Monroney?

Senator MONRONEY. No questions.

Senator PURTELL. The next witness is Mr. M. H. Forester, vice president of the Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co. of Pittburgh, Pa.

STATEMENT OF MAX H. FORESTER, VICE PRESIDENT, PITTSBURGH CONSOLIDATION COAL CO., PITTSBURGH, PA.

Mr. FORESTER. My name is Max H. Forester. My business address is Koppers Building, Pittsburgh, Pa. I am a vice president of Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co., and appear on behalf of the Western Pennsylvania Coal Operators Association, a member of the coal Producers Committee on Underground Gas Storage Safety. I have been affiliated with the coal-mining industry and the predecessors of Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co. since 1912, continuously with the exception of the World War II years.

During 1946 and 1947, I was affiliated with the United States military government in Germany in charge of the rehabilitation of the German coal-mining industry and other nonferrous mining in the United States zone of occupation. To this was added, in 1947, the reorganization of the Ruhr coal-mining industry under joint United States-British authority.

I have investigated and studied the problem of underground storage of gas in coal-mining areas since April 1952.

The western Pennsylvania coal-mining area, in which the Coal Operators Association, captive mineowners, and other mining interests are prominently engaged in mining and supplying the needs of the tremendously important industries concentrated in western Pennsylvania, produced over 56 million tons of coal in 1953. This amounted to 12 percent of the Nation's total bituminous coal output for that year. An uninterrupted supply of this coal is essential to the present and future life of the steel industry, the electric power industry, the chemical industry and many other important manufacturing units, not only in western Pennsylvania, but in other areas.

Coal properties are owned partly in fee, partly mineral rights, and partly leased. The gas and oil rights were in some instances disposed of by the original owner prior to the acquisition of the coal and mining rights. Where the property is owned in fee, a majority of the gas and oil rights were either leased or sold to individual gas companies from time to time by the coal companies. It is important to call attention to the fact that none of the sales or leases of gas and oil rights by owners, of any type, permitted anything more than the right to drill for and remove the gas or oil which nature had accumulated in the ground.

This fact was recognized by the gas companies when the possibilities of injection and storage underground first became apparent. They have attempted, therefore, to acquire these rights after their own exploration tests have proven the suitability of a given pool, but not before.

There are no coal companies to my knowledge which have knowingly granted the right to store gas under their coal-mining properties.

It has not been the custom for a gas company to give notice to a coal company of intent to store, where the properties overlapped.

The coal property owners, both commercial and captive, recognize the fact that underground storage of gas, either natural or manufactured, is in the interest of the public, in that it permits the building of reserves for orderly withdrawal in periods of peak demand, thereby benefiting the domestic, commercial, and industrial consumers of any State. However, the unregulated and unrestricted storage of gas, whether above ground or underground, which carries with it the possibility and particularly the probability of danger to human life and the property of others, cannot under any stretch of the imagination be considered to be in the interest of the public and the welfare of the State or the Nation.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. You say unrestricted and unregulated. Nobody is advocating that here.

Mr. FORESER. No, Senator, but they have been up to the present time. Senator SCHOEPPEL. We are talking about from here on with reference to this legislation.

Mr. FORESTER. Quite so.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. It is assumed naturally, and there is a great responsibility on anyone passing legislation to insure that there is going to be regulation and restriction before these certificates are granted. I do not want to approach it from the standpoint of an irresponsible approach, namely, unrestricted and unregulated. Now, that is just not in contemplation.

Mr. FORESTER. I was speaking of the wording of the bill as it stands, Senator. There is no semblance of regulation or restriction in it. Senator SCHOEPPEL. I see. I get your point now.

Mr. FORESTER. May I continue?

Senator PURTELL. Yes.

Mr. FORESTER. Underground storage has been selected by the gas industry as the most economical type of storage developed to date. It is not the only type available. Liquefaction of gas has been developed to a high degree after years of research by gas and oil companies. A liquid gas storage project was in successful use in a midwestern city for some time, but an unfortunate accident involving considerable loss of life and property shelved further development temporarily.

A new project is quite far advanced involving liquefaction and storage on floating tankers with capacities of 400 million cubic feet each. While this development may have its application largely to areas accessible to water transport, it could serve as a substitute for underground storage, where the latter conflicts with considerations of public safety.

Capital investment, operating costs and revenues from the liquefaction of gas are indicated as economically comparable with underground storage.

Underground storage fields have been developed principally in depleted gas and oil sands, and a number of those in the Appalachian area, covering the States of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, are either overlain by active coal-mining operations or are in close proximity thereto. Others are under coal reserve areas which may not be mined for several years.

Some of the leading gas companies have definitely recognized that the operation of high pressure surface lines and underground storage pools in coexistence with active coal-mining operations creates some problems not encountered elsewhere. Reference to maps of coaland gas-producing areas in the United States shows that gas-producing sands and coal seams overlap to a considerable extent in at least 10 States. Most of these areas have been extensively drilled for both oil and gas production for the past 100 years or more, under lease rights from the original owners. These leases, however, did not convey the right to repressure and inject gas of foreign or native origin.

No one can deny that mining operations are severely handicapped by the oil and gas wells which penetrate the coal seam. The more there are, the greater the difficulty and the more severe the losses to the coal owner. A protective barrier of 1 acre of coal more or less is commonly required to be left for the protection of each well in each seam penetrated. This interferes considerably with normal projection, development, and mining, and entails increased mining costs and losses in capital assets.

Unfortunately, there is no certainty of storage pool limits or boundaries. Geologic characteristics, determined from the log of bore holes, are used to outline a given storage pool proposal, resulting in some rather oddly irregular areas.

The extent to which gas travels from the injection wells depends to a considerable extent on the degree of permeability of the storage sand or strata and the injection or pool pressure. One of the larger pools in the Appalachian area merged with two smaller pools in a period of 1 year, extending over a mile beyond the original limits in one direction and more than a half mile in another direction. Unless pool pressures are limited by statutory control, they will unquestionably be subject to substantial increase with the demand for greater storage capacity in existing reservoirs.

As a result, pool limits can be expected to extend into previously unexpected areas, considerably beyond those originally conceived, and presently approved by the Federal Power Commission.

It has been the practice of gas companies to base their selection of storage areas on the results of injection tests made without notice or information to the property owners, surface or subsurface, prior to the acquisition of storage or injection rights. The hazard of this secretive and unregulated practice to any overlying coal or other mining operation should appear obvious to anyone, in view of the fact that most of those mining areas have been penetrated by thousands of wells, many of which are uncharted and unrecorded and were drilled by persons now unknown over the past 75 years. The majority of these wells were abandoned and poorly plugged, if at all. The gas companies have found them extremely difficult to locate, and mining operations have cut into abandoned wells frequently with resultant loss and damage to life and property.

The claim has been made by representatives of the gas industry that the depleted gas sands which are being used for underground storage today are leakproof at the original rock pressure as nature. created them. Consider these facts. The overlying strata have been drilled full of holes, and these holes have been shot with successive