Gas Industry Making Big Progress Overseas

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 30

Gas Industry Making Big Progress Overseas

In all the progressive countries of the world the gas industry was on the march, Mr E. F. Gorman, the engineer of the Christchurch Gas Company, found on a recent four-month trip during which he visited Hong Kong, Japan, the United States, Britain and parts of the Continent.

Quoting Mr F. Lee, the British Minister of Power, Mr Gorman said: “The gas industry, which a few years ago seemed to be taking a count of 10, is now bubbling, bounding and going ahead at an enormous pace. If we can get the same spirit through the whole of British industry the old country can tell the world how to conduct its affairs.”

This, said Mr Gorman in an interview during which he surveyed what he had seen of the progress of the industry overseas, summed up the position.

Everywhere, the gas industry was progressing without the use of the old-fashioned coal method. There was natural gas, sometimes carried thousands of miles in huge tankers, gas from petroleum, and gas from the 1.C.1. process for the continuous steam reforming of naphtha. “In fact, gas can be made from practically anything,” Mr Gorman said.

The progress had been achieved solely because of the amount of research that had gone into the use of gas and new methods of making it, Mr Gorman said. This research had paid great dividends; but it had not been ended. Research was a continuing process.

In Japan, Mr Gorman saw the Tokyo Gas Company’s plant which supplies more than 2.5 million consumers, and which has been rebuilt since the war during which it lost two-thirds of its consumers and its production and distribution facilities.

Side by side on a huge property, the company makes coal gas, thermal-cracking oil gas, naphtha gas with reformers, catalytic cracking of oil gas, and natural gas. The facilities are operated according to the fluctuation in demand, and at any time the company can switch from one form of supply to another. This was something that happened elsewhere, Mr Gorman said. It was something that could happen in New Zealand if natural gas was developed. In Britain Mr Gorman found a completely different picture to what he saw 15 years ago when last in that country. The British gas industry was nationalised, but the gas boards were autonomous bodies with experienced, dedicated professional appointed men running them, he said.

Sales Increase In the year up to March 31, 1964, actual sales in Britain were 2 per cent higher than in the previous year, when the winter was the coldest of the century, and the surplus earned was £9.6m, twice a high as in 1962-63.

Mr Gorman found that gas sale increases were 1 per cent in 1961-62, 3 per cent the next year and 5 per cent the next With the higher sales of gas appliances, central heating installations showed an increase of 60 per cent and space heaters 40 per cent. “Central heating is sweeping the country, and gas is gaining over electricity, which is more expensive,” he said. “Particularly in the smokefree areas, where solid fuels are going out and the Government makes a grant on the basis of so much for each fireplace towards the cost of converting to gas or electricity, gas is gaining rapidly.”

So great was the demand

that a few years ago the industry had set the target of doubling itself in 10 years. Mr Gorman said there was every indication that this programme had begun well. The East Midlands Gas Board calculated that at the present rate of increase it would have to commission a new 50 million cubic feet a day production plant every year to meet the enhanced loads. In New Zealand, where the industry in the main still used the coal carbonisation process, there was not a general appreciation of just how far the industry elsewhere had advanced with new methods of production, Mr Gorman said. Those new methods had also brought lower costs. Coal Going Out Some gas plants in Britain just could not take coal any longer, even if it could be offered at greatly reduced rates. As more reforming units were brought into operation using petroleum feedstocks, so older, more uneconomic carbonising plants were shutting down. Two years ago more than 70 per cent of the gas supplied was coal-based, and nearly 22m tons of coal was used; but this dropped to 60 per cent last year, and the drop would continue.

Mr Gorman said it was realised in Britain that to increase its coal consumption by more than the most marginal amounts, the gas industry would be hastening its own decline. The strides made by the industry in recent years had been made possible by the far-reaching technological advances in gas manufacture from liquid feedstocks. There was now speculation on whether similar developments could be made to process coal.

Gas research and development was financed by about £3m a year. One result had been the gas recycle hydrogenerator, another the catalytic rich gas process which could produce a substitute natural gas from light distillate. Then there was methane gas from the Sahara Desert. Gas was liquefied in Algeria, loaded into specially-built tankers and taken to Canvey Island, there to be turned back to gas and piped all over England. Nigerian Gas

While Mr Gorman was in Britain the serious stage in British moves to buy Nigerian methane gas began. “The Times” reported that prospews were so good that within the next two years and a half Britain would be using Nigerian gas, and that it would be the cheapest fuel available in the country from any source.

It was expected that two tankers costing £l6m would be built in British shipyards for the new trade.

But there were hopes that natural gas could be found nearer home, and in the tempestuous North Sea there was a treasure hunt for the “black gold” of petroleum and its natural gases, Mr Gorman continued.

Huge oil-drill rigs were being mounted far out to sea. The British Gas Council was a partner with the oil companies and other interested organisations in the multimillion search.

This search was prompted by the discovery six or seven years ago of a huge natural gas field in Holland. This gas was available for sale to Britain—but at a price—and at present it was cheaper to bring in the North African methane.

New methods of making gas were not the only developments seen by Mr Gorman in Britain. One was gas delivered to containers installed outside homes. Bottled gas had been used in the United States for many years. Now it was being used to take the wanted fuel to rural areas and to residential districts outside reticulated areas.

Bottled gas could be very useful in gaining the industry new customers where it was planned to extend reticulation within a short time. Containers could be put outside the houses at present, and when the underground mains reached the areas it was a simple matter to swing to the reticulated service. Underground Storage

Britain was also going into the underground storage of gas, again something that had been done in the United States, Mr Gorman said. Underground storage could provide huge, natural and safe reservoirs, and it saved costly gas-holders. Throughout Europe there was also a continuing rise in the demand for gas, Mr Gorman said, and natural gas was meeting much of the demand. A new Russian project demonstrated how important gas was regarded by those who wanted it. Natural gas from Central Asia was being piped several thousands of miles to Moscow and was expected to be available there in two years. Mr Gorman also found great progress being made in Australia, both in the natural gas field and in gas from oil fuel.

He recalled a message to the last Australian Gas Association’s convention that natural gas “undoubtedly holds a vital key to Australia’s most exciting national development.”

In South Australia the use of oil 'products and plans for using natural gas were part of a dramatic programme of development. The South Australian Gas Company had a £700,000 expansion project. Coal gasification had been completely eliminated at the big Brompton gasworks. Mr Gorman returned home with his knowledge of what its going on tn the world of gas gained from overseas scientific and technical journals reinforced by personal observations and discussions with leaders of the industry. “Science and research have taken the industry out of the doldrums of a few years ago," he said. “The lesson of what can be done is there to be followed by those with a will to progress.”