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Natural Gas

History

  • 1887 - Gainesville citizens receives manufactured gas in their homes from a private firm
  • 1959 - Gainesville grants a thirty-year, non-exclusive franchise to the Gainesville Gas Company to deliver natural gas
  • 1989 - agreement ends and the City acquired the gas system
  • 1990 - GRU assumes operation
  • Today - GRU has more than 720 miles of underground mains, linking to GRU's 32,000 customers
  • During winter - gas is stored as a liquid in specially designed tanks or in underground reservoirs

How Gas Was Formed

  • Millions of years ago, plants and animals at the bottom of the ocean began to decay
  • As this organic material was heated and subjected to pressure from rock it eventually became methane gas
  • Today, geologists are still locating large reserves of natural gas here in the United States