Gas for Iron

Like frost traceries upon a window pane, 81,000 miles of pipelines fan out over the U. S. from the nation's three chief natural gas fields: 1) in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky; 2) Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana; 3) Southern California. Last year these capillaries of modern commerce carried so much gas (1,336,863,000,000 cu. ft.) that Congress passed the Natural Gas Act giving the Federal Power Commission authority over interstate pipelines similar to what it already had over interstate transmission of electricity. Last week FPC received from Kansas Pipe Line & Gas Co. the first application for a new line since the act was passed.

With total assets of but $2,563,208 and a net for the past fiscal year of only $100,427, K. P. L. & G. is still a puny bubble in the ballooning natural gas business. But it asks FPC for permission to construct a $21,470,000 line (financed by a $20,000,000 RFC loan) from the Hugoton fields in southwestern Kansas through unexploited territory across Nebraska and the Dakotas into northwestern Minnesota. If permission is granted,* the company expects to sell 13,623,080,000 cu. ft. for $3,024,447 in the first year of operation, 20,165,390,000 for $5,469,847 in the fifth. The line would total 2,346 miles, serve 129 communities with combined population of 370,000, none of which is now supplied with natural gas.

Although K. P. L. & G.'s application stressed the communities its new line would serve, the company hopes to find a pot of gold at the end of its modest rainbow. The extremity of the projected line will reach the Mesabi Iron Range, richest in the U. S., whose ores now go to the blast furnaces of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania. However, Mesabi has also much low-grade ore which has not been considered worth shipping out for smelting. K. P. L. & G. hopes by bringing a low-priced fuel to the site of Mesabi's low-grade ores to beget a new steel industry and a major market for its gas.

* The National Bituminous Coal Commission at once protested to FPC that the proposed line would hurt the coal industry and the railroads.

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