|
|
|
||||||||||
|
THE DOMINION RECORDS |
HISTORY OF THE DOMINION EAST OHIO GAS COMPANY
As the first company to import more-affordable natural gas into a region that had previously relied on costly manufactured gas, the East Ohio Gas Company (later named The Dominion East Ohio Gas Company) played a significant role in state and national history. The East Ohio Gas Company (EOG) was incorporated on September 8, 1898 as a marketing company for the National Transit Company, the natural gas arm of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The company launched its business by selling to consumers in northeast Ohio gas produced by another National Transit subsidiary, Hope Natural Gas Company.
Rubber-manufacturing city Akron was the first to take advantage of the lower prices for natural gas. It granted the East Ohio Gas Company a franchise in September 1898, the same month that the company was founded. During the winter of 1898-1899, the National Transit Company built a 10-inch wrought iron pipeline that stretched from the Pipe Creek on the Ohio River to Akron, with branches to Canton, Massillon, Dover, New Philadelphia, Uhrichsville, and Dennison. The first gas from the pipeline burned in Akron on May 10, 1899.
In 1908, the East Ohio Gas Company absorbed the Mahoning Gas Fuel Company in Youngstown, and built a gas line from Canton to the Youngstown and Warren areas. The company also took over several manufactured gas firms, purchasing the Cleveland Gas Light and Coke Company and People's Gas Light Company in 1910, the Canton Gas Light and Coke Company in 1911, and Akron's Mohican Oil and Gas in 1913. To meet increased demands generated by the integration of those companies' customers into the East Ohio Gas Company, a 20-inch main was constructed from the gas fields of West Virginia. The company marked two notable milestones as it entered the World War I era. It began publishing a periodical for its 1,900 employees in 1914, and, in 1916, it constructed a six-story office building in Cleveland. When the United States entered the war, 134 company employees joined the service. To meet the need for workers as the number of men in the workforce plummeted, the company began hiring women as tellers and collectors for the first time. At the end of World War I, the East Ohio Gas Company entered a period of significant change, both within and beyond the company. The company introduced an annuity and benefit plan in 1918. Regulation, first by the state and then, during the Great Depression, by the federal government, became a fact of life for gas companies. Both during and after the war, demand increased and gas supplies from West Virginia diminished, causing gas shortages. Measures such as efforts to make gas appliances safer and more efficient and raising awareness about the importance of conservation sufficed to protect the supply of gas to East Ohio customers until World War II.
On the eve of World War II, J. French Robinson assumed the presidency of the company. It was his task to meet growing demands for natural gas by defense industries in northeastern Ohio. Underground storage pools were opened in 1941 and 1942. The company built a 120-mile pipeline across Ohio in 1943 to tap into pipelines that brought southwestern gas into Ohio. In 1944, gas became available from Hope Natural Gas, another CNG company, when a pipeline linked Hope to gas fields in Texas. The East Ohio Gas Company also made tremendous strides in the liquefaction, storage, and regasification of natural gas. Liquefaction and regasification made it possible to reduce the volume of gas by ratio of six hundred to one, which reduced the amount of storage capacity the company needed. The company built a plant in Cleveland in 1941 for performing the process of liquefaction and regasification. Three tanks were built to hold 60-million cubic feet of gas each. A fourth tank was added in 1943 that held 120 million cubic feet, setting the stage for a historic industrial disaster. Gas escaped from the fourth tank and ignited into a ball of flame that swept a mile-wide area and claimed 129 lives. In the aftermath of the explosion and fire, the company paid $7,000,000 in compensation to injured workers or families of workers killed in the disaster. It also created a scholarship fund for children of employees who perished.
William G. Rogers assumed the presidency of East Ohio Gas in 1951, and a new era began. To compete with suppliers of electric power, the company aggressively advertised its gas and gas appliances, adopting uniforms, standardizing the color of their service trucks, and taking advantage of the new medium of television. A TV program promoting natural gas use, Through the Kitchen Window, was telecast from the company office building.
G.J. Tankersley became president of The East Ohio Gas Company in 1966. He also became chairman of the American Gas Association (AGA) in 1971. Tankersley continued to emphasize marketing and sales, but a looming gas shortage increasingly occupied his attention. To help offset the crisis, the company, in partnership with its parent company, Consolidated Natural Gas, revived gas exploration and production in Ohio and West Virginia. It also stressed conservation and included conservation education in its sales efforts. The height of the crisis came in the mid-1970s, just after Francis Wright became president of the company. The federal government, reacting to the full-fledged energy crisis, placed a moratorium on new gas hookups between 1975 and 1978. Another complication was the severe winters of the period. Dudley Taw inherited the presidency and the crisis in 1975. A result of the energy crisis was increased employee and consumer activism. Employees were concerned about downsizing that resulted from the gas shortage, while consumers were frustrated about the problems with gas supply. Improving relationships between the East Ohio Gas Company, its employees and its consumers was an important mission for J. Richard Kelso, who became president in 1981. During the 1980s, the company also benefited from advancements in communications, computerization, and pipeline construction. The East Ohio Gas Company reflected on its history in 1988 when it celebrated its 90th anniversary. It made plans to create a historical center by soliciting historical materials and developing a system of cataloging and preserving them. A company history, The Spirit of Progress: The Story of the East Ohio Gas Company and The People Who Made It was published. In 1998, the company celebrated its centennial by creating a traveling exhibit and turning over its archives to the Ohio Historical Society so that they could be made available to the public at the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor. On January 28th, 2000, The East Ohio Gas Company officially became The Dominion East Ohio Gas Company. |
||||||||||
|
http://www.ohiohistory.org/resource/archlib/dominion/history.html || Last modified Tuesday, 26-Jul-2005 12:40:46 Eastern Daylight Time Ohio Historical Center 1982 Velma Ave. Columbus, OH 43211 © 1996-2008 All Rights Reserved. |