blasts of nitroglycerine varying from 2 to 6 quarts per foot of pay

sand.

Mining has disturbed from 500 to 1,000 feet of the subsurface strata overlying the coal seams, with unknown effects on strata underlying them. We have evidence in mining of the swelling and fracturing of these underlying strata. These facts should appear sufficient to refute any claim that "nature's reservoir" is still intact and unspoiled. Senator SCHOEPPEL. Let us say the initial rock pressure was X thousand pounds at the virgin pressure.

Mr. FORESTER. Yes, sir.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. Then if a company or anyone would utilize that reservoir for storage of gas and go beyond that X pressure, you say that there would be a possibility of a hazard, and I agree with you. Well, now, if it was limited to below that pressure, what would you say?

Mr. FORESTER. That would depend entirely upon the physical condition, Senator, of that particular area, the strata above, to what extent it had been disturbed. One gas company has a pool in western Pennsylvania established in about 1932 in an area which was drilled full of holes by oil and gas operators, wildcatters, in the early 1900's. They found it was impossible to locate the various wells drilled. There were no records and they have maintained that pool only in a safe manner by limiting the pressure to a very low one, far below the original rock pressure. There were wells under houses and residences, and they did not know where they were and could not take a chance. That pressure was limited to only one-tenth of the rock pressure. They have chosen from time to time to even reduce the pressure below that. The mining operation overlying that area closed. The operator chose to close rather than to operate the mine at a hazard to his men, and he lost that mining operation.

Senator MONRONEY. Can you tell me how deep the sands are that they store the gas at?

Mr. FORESTER. Well, they overlay each other in parallel layers.
Senator MONRONEY. Is it 500 feet or 1,000 feet?

Mr. FORESTER. It can vary from 500 feet down to 3,000 or 4,000 feet. Senator MONRONEY. Do you have them as deep as 3,000 and 4,000 feet?

Mr. FORESTER. Oh, yes. These wells are even located in coal seams. There are two areas in West Virginia and one in western Pennsylvania in that region in the coal seam, the gas is in the coal seam and they got so much gas that they left the coal mine and left the gas in the coal

seam.

The coal industry has no objection to the grant of eminent domain rights to any public-service organization, involving the right of ingress and egress, the use of land and surface property, provided such use does not seriously interfere with, limit or jeopardize its established or future mining operations.

The coal industry also serves the American public in a big way, a fact which is too often overlooked, excepting in periods of emergency. It has expressed its agreement with the grant of eminent domain for storage purposes when accompanied by limiting provisions according to industrial, geological, or other peculiarities found in different States and sections of States or mining regions. It therefore should remain a State function.

S. 525 as written uses the term "land" and "interest in land" without definition of meaning. Some gas companies have already expressed their desire to condemn large sections of existing coal mines or an entire mine-even whole reserve areas if it suits their purpose. Transmission and distribution companies might well demand condemnation of wide and extensive reserve pillars to protect their pipelines from subsidence. Such rights, if granted, could practically destroy the value of considerable areas of coal rendered economically unminable thereby. Much valuable coal might be permanently lost in such manner.

Matters of joint interest or concern arising between the gas industry and the coal industry during the past 20 or 30 years have been regulated by the several States through their duly constituted agencies. Underground gas storage did not develop as a major interest of the gas industry until after World War II.

The coal industry at large and individual mine operators did not become aware of the impact of underground gas storage on the safety of mining operations until the establishment of a limited number of storage pools under existing coal mines was an accomplished fact.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. You understand that there was testimony produced here by way of amendments that would protect the coal industry from that possibility. We are not going to be unmindful of the property rights of other people in a different industry. It would be patently unfair to say to one section of the industry of the country that you can go in and because it suits your purpose to root out other public interests and other mining operations that have potential value. Mr. FORESTER. I am quite sure you have that understanding and belief, but after these properties should be condemned under existing and contemplated reservoirs in our particular western Pennsylvania area and if this area were confiscated or destroyed or eventually shut down voluntarily, then it would automatically jeopardize the life and operations of considerable steel industry operations in that area, chemical plants, powerplants, and everything else. For that reason this area is just as important from the standpoint of the supply of coal as any other area, as well as the storage of gas.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. Do you not assume that the responsible department of Government before whom these applications must be made would go into all those phases of the things and rightfully should consider all those factors before a certificate would be issued?

Mr. FORESTER. Quite so, but they have not. The Federal agency which has had that under its jurisdiction up to the present time, the Federal Power Commission, has not taken it into consideration.

Senator PURTELL. I think you will find that Chairman Kuykendall mentioned that they would not permit the granting under those circumstances.

Mr. FORESTER. If I may so so, I believe your committee should carefully go into the question of whether or not the Federal Power Commission, under the authorization of the Natural Gas Act, has the jurisdiction to consider these questions.

Senator PURTELL. I can assure you that this point will be completely explored by the committee, because we are most interested in bringing out a fair piece of legislation, fair to all.

Mr. FORESTER. Representatives of both the coal and gas industries have joined in several of the gas and oil and coal producing States in an endeavor to arrive at a mutually satisfactory legislative program.

These efforts have demonstrated the need for a careful and sensible approach by virtue of wide variations in physical characteristics, technical considerations and property rights. There are major considerations of safety, conservation, and continuity of fuel supply and service to both industry and the public, by both the gas industry and the coal industry.

Months of study and negotiations have already been consumed and many more will be required. In western Pennsylvania, representatives of the coal and gas industries have been working on this problem for 18 months, and we are confident that a mutually satisfactory State legislative program will be available by the latter part of 1954.

I am quite sure that Mr. J. French Robinson would subscribe to that statement.

This program will incorporate fully the necessary factors of safety, for the protection of mining personnel. It will also provide for the use of the right of eminent domain for underground storage of gas.

Under these circumstances, it is our belief that the passage of S. 525 would be both untimely and undesirable. It is a state problem, and both the jurisdiction and the solution thereof should remain vested in the State.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. I might say, Mr. Chairman, that some very positive positions were taken by other witnesses and even on the part of other departments, when we called them, that they were and should be required to give due cognizance and consideration to State laws because if there is any one thing we ought to protect it is the right of the State and the entity of the State and what they have worked out. I might say here in passing, and I know this is an extremely important economic situation, that we have to try to gear some type of legislation to it. The great desire on the part of the people of this country, the consuming areas, to utilize and make a distinction on the type of fuel and energy that they want to use in a preferential way, right or wrong, has created this great, unprecedented demand for natural gas and, as in a lot of the coal areas, various factors have entered into that.

But there is also a tendency on the part of a lot of these great producing areas in this great natural resources section to want the other taken out of its area because they say all well and good if we can keep it in these areas we can see in it tomorrow's great potential operation for industrial development where we can use it and utilize it. Congress has got to face all these factors and try to work out something that is the greatest good to the greatest number.

I do not say here that we can, by legislation, close all the loopholes and the hazards, but if we bring out legislation in a recommended form and our branch of Congress can put certain requirements in there that are good, the furthest possible limits to safeguard all the factors, first of safety, second of property rights, and third the regulated features of the respective States in relation to the Federal Government, and I make this statement particularly with reference to the statement you made that people in your industry and people in the gas industry are working together to try to come up with something, and it would be helpful if the committee had the benefit of that and it is a step in the right direction and we hope that we can help you.

Senator PURTELL. I understand your joint interest, your study that you are making will not be complete until the latter part of 1954.

Mr. FORESTER. Possibly not before then. It takes time.
Senator PURTELL. How long have you been working on it?

Mr. FORESTER. About 18 months. It was under consideration not only in the State of Pennsylvania, but in the States of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio. We still believe that it is the function of the State, that the States have already taken steps to solve their problems and there is no particular need in this day and age of centralizing this particular effort at the moment, not until it is necessary to do so. We believe in decentralizing, and we believe that the States have been able to regulate up to the present time those various problems in promulgating drilling and plugging operations, which were the only things on which we could come together.

Senator PURTELL. Senator Hunt introduced an amendment that would require the State commissioner to approve the request for eminent domain before the company could acquire the land. Would that meet your objections?

Mr. FORESTER. It is not up to me to decide what State regulatory body should take charge. That is something for the individual State to decide. It is a question of whether an individual or a commission should govern. I am not in favor of commissions. I do not think you can place responsibility on two or three men.

Senator PURTELL. If the State commission could approve or disapprove, wouldn't that meet your objection? Isn't that returning to the State the right to approve or disapprove?

Mr. FORESTER. It would if the States would and did have the jurisdiction.

Senator PURTELL. I am not trying to get you to answer "Yes" or "No," but I thought perhaps that would meet your objection.

Mr. FORESTER. I do not think the Federal Government should sit in and tell the State who should regulate this. I think that is up to the State to decide.

Senator PURTELL. Are there any other questions, Senator Schoep

pel?

Senator SCHOEPPEL. No questions.

Senator PURTELL. Senator Monroney?

Senator MONRONEY. No further questions.

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

The next witness is Mr. B. D. Broeker, assistant vice president of the Bethlehem Steel Corp., of Pittsburgh, Pa.

STATEMENT OF BERNARD D. BROEKER, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT, BETHLEHEM STEEL CORP., PITTSBURGH, PA.

Mr. BROEKER. My name is Bernard D. Broeker and my address is 701 East Third Street, Bethlehem, Pa. I am an assistant secretary and assistant to the vice president of Bethlehem Steel Corp. and of most of its subsidiary companies.

The Federal Trade Commission has had me kind of busy the last 10 days or so, and I have not had time to get together a statement. The principal steel making subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corp. is Bethlehem Steel Co. It operates five steel making plants in the eastern part of the United States, at each of which plants it operates

47560-54- -6

byproduct coking ovens which consume bituminous coal. The operation of those coking ovens is, of course, an essential part of the making of steel by the present-day open-hearth process.

The major part (about 80 percent) of the bituminous coal used to operate those coking ovens is produced for Bethlehem Steel Co. by two corporations, each named Bethlehem Mines Corp. One of them is a Delaware corporation which operates mines in Pennsylvania and the other is a West Virginia corporation which operates mines in that State. The two together have approximately 7,700 employees. They operate 12 mines which in the year 1953 shipped approximately 9,800,000 net tons of coking coal, all of which was shipped to the steel plants owned and operated by Bethlehem Steel Co.

The two corporations have the same management and they together comprise a coal mine operation which is in terms of tonnage the fourth largest in the coal industry in the United States.

Our views with regard to the problems created by the storage of natural gas in the vicinity of coal mines are not motivated by any desire to affect the status of natural gas as a competitor of coal in the market place. Bethlehem Steel Co. itself is a consumer and user of natural gas, and we have the interest of a consumer in having large quantities of natural gas available in Pennsylvania at reasonable prices.

Our views are based entirely upon our concern for the safety of our employees and for the continued operation of our coal mines. We have been concerned with the problem for many months, particularly since the time, about 2 years ago, that we discovered that an existing underground natural gas storage pool or reservoir-the Pratt pool of Equitable Gas Co.-probably extends beneath a corner of our Mariana mine No. 58 in Washington County, Pa.

We agree with the statements that have been presented here by representatives of the Western Pennsylvania Coal operators association and the Northern West Virginia Coal Association. We are firmly convinced that the storage of natural gas underneath or in the vicinity of coal seams presents potentialities of disaster to the employees and operators of coal mines in those seams, and we are likewise convinced that the solution of the problems and the adjustment of the relationships between coal mines and gas storage pools should be left to the States.

The Federal Government has, through the coal mine safety code, undertaken certain responsibilities in connection with the safety of coal mines, but we firmly believe that this particular problem of underground gas storage should be left to the States to handle. They certainly have the primary responsibility for the safety of coal-mine operations and we think that it is the States, with their specialized departments concerned with mining and with oil and gas-well drilling and operating, that should work out and police the necessary relationships and working arrangements.

I will not take the time of your committee, or encumber the record, by repeating in detail points made by other representatives of the coal-mining industry. I will only say that the problems they have referred to are our problems as well. We have, however, one problem that many in the coal industry do not have, at least in nearly so serious a form. That is the problem presented by the exercise of the right of eminent domain, or of condemnation.