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Article: Natural Gas Industry
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY
NATURAL GAS INDUSTRY.
Before being used for energy purposes, the natural gas seeping from the earth produced "burning springs" that were of ritual and religious significance to early Greek, Persian, and Indian cultures. The British first commercialized natural gas around 1785. In the United States, natural gas was primarily a curiosity until the middle of the nineteenth century, but thereafter its importance as an energy resource increased significantly. As early as 1626, French missionaries recorded incidents of Indians igniting natural gas springs off Lake Erie and its surrounding streams. Early explorers noticed natural gas being emitted from the ground on both ...