WHERE DOES THE GAS GO?

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 271, 6 February 1928, Page 11

WHERE DOES THE GAS GO?

PROBLEM FOR EXPERTS Losing more than one-seventh of its gas in some mysterious way, the gas company faces a baffling problem, which it never hopes to solve. “Have you any way of ascertaining the loss of gas?” asked a shareholder at the annual meeting to-day. Mr. J. H. Upton, chairman of directors: "We know what we lose, but we cannot find where it goes. The percentage is too high, but we cannot lower it. It is partly owing to th© climate in which we live." A Shareholder: I know one reason. I smelt gas outside and workmen found a large hole in the pipe. "No gas company can be carried on without this loss," said Mr. Upton. “It is unaccounted-for gas. In England it amounts to seven or eight per cent., but here under different conditions it is as high as 15. We don’t know how to account for it. but we try by every means to obviate it. The general manager said Mr. Upton had his eye upon the subject every day. The loss through broken pipes could not be very great because- gas was such an offensive thing to the human nose.