PENNSYLVANIA+NATURAL+RESOURCES+INFORMATION

[|Oil and Gas] "Colonel" Edwin L. Drake's successful oil well in Titusville, PA in 1859 initiated an industry upon which most of our modern lives depend. Oil and natural gas have become essential commodities. While the earliest uses were for sources of light and heat, modern uses also include lubricating oils, fuels for everything from jets to manufacturing facilities, plastics, vinyl, paint, and synthetic fabric just to name a few. Some of the world's largest corporations are concerned with the various aspects of the oil and gas industry: exploration, production, refining, marketing, and research of petroleum.

[|Mineral Industries] "Pennsylvania is a major supplier of commodities such as: limestone, which is made into agricultural lime, cement, and other construction materials; sandstone and sand-and-gravel deposits that are also used for construction materials and in the manufacture of glass and other products; diabase, which is shaped and polished for use in monuments and buildings; and slate, which is used in making such diverse products as roofing shingles, billiard tables, and turkey calls."

[|Coal] "Coal is a rock composed of the altered and compressed remains of plant material which, by burial, escaped decomposition and which occurs as layers within the surface rocks of the earth. Coal contains, stored within itself, the elements and sun's energy that these plants collected into their own constituent compounds when they grew many millions of years ago. When coal is burned these stored elements and energy are released just as when a piece of wood is burned. Coal is burned to generate our electricity and to make our iron and steel. It is refined to make medicines, plastics, synthetic rubber, fertilizer, cosmetics, food products, paint, dyes, and even the fibers of our clothes."

[|Coalbed Methane] "As early as 1802, the English inventor William Murdock disclosed how coal gas (then known as firedamp) could be removed easily and burnt as a light source. This colorless, odorless, and nonpoisonous gas has been produced in the United States since the early part of the century, and production has occurred from the Pittsburgh seam in the Northern Appalachian coal basin since the 1930's, but generally the gas has been vented to the atmosphere. Multidisciplinary work by the United States Department of Energy in the late 1970's spurred new interest in the direct use of coalbed methane as a natural gas resource. The Pennsylvania Geological Survey has been investigating coalbed methane for about eleven years. One of the challenges of current researchers is to learn more about coalbed methane so that we can turn this former waste product that is a mining and environmental hazard into a valuable resource. With this in mind, economic, legal, and environmental factors will ultimately determine the fate of this currently wasted and much maligned, but valuable, resource."