BRITISH GAS INDUSTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22712, 26 October 1935, Page 21

BRITISH GAS INDUSTRY

BELOW PRE-WAR PRICE (Fuom Oub Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, October 5, In his presidential address at the a nnual conference of the British Comnwercia! Gas Association, Councillor Waller Muter, of Edinburgh, said that since the war the price of gas in Edinburgh had been progressively reduced flora 5s 8d to 2s lid per 1000 cubic feet, coupled

with a sliding scale for quantities used, the minimum price being Is (3d per 1000 cubic feet, or 3.78 per therm. Further reductions or modification of the scale of charges were under review and the financial position of the concern was | so favourably consolidated that it was ; possible that in the immediate future | gas would be available at prices hitherto unthought of. It was already below pre-war price, a compliment which could not be paid to many of the materials used in its production. The same fortunate position was apparent throughout the country, and the many reductions in price which had been published recently indicated that the gas industry had firmly established

itself as the one and only practical and economic solution of their heating prob- ! leins. Gas had rightly been termed the “ fuel of the future.” The gas industry was a pioneer in modern methods of ' publicity. Since they began to adverI tise in the newspapers their sales of | gas liad increased by 50 per cent., and this development had enabled them to give consistently better service to their customers at lower cost. VALUABLE BY-PKODUCTS. To-day the gas industry was already extracting the valuable elements from 17,000,000 tons of British coal every year. The chief by-product—lo,ooo,ooo tons of coke —was known to every one.

But not everyone. knew how the other by-products of gas manufacture were put to the service of other industries. Coal treated at the gasworks yielded British motor spirit for cars, and tar for non-skid roads; raw materials for the growing British dyestuffs industry; chemicals for the manufacture of medicines and perfumes. They were even putting coal “ back to the land ” by extracting fertiliser for farms and gardens. The extraction and sale of those by-productts hud a direct effect upoy the prj,ce of gas*. It was partly because of those activities that we iu this country had the cheapes£ coal gas in thr world.