Texas Gulf Sulfur Company

1
THE
Texas Gulf Sulfur Company
Mary Wissinger Texas Gulf Sulfur Company El
Campo High School Mr. Spenrath Wharton County
2
Where It All Began...

• The first main mine was called the Boling Dome,
  which was discovered in 1901 by oil drillers
• They found little oil, but sulfur and salt were
  plentiful
• In 1908 two business men, A.C. Einstein and
  J.W. Harrison purchased the Big Hill mineral
  rights and drilled for sulfur
• The Gulf Sulfur Company was officially founded
  on December 23, 1909, with Matagorda as its
  headquarters

J.W. Harrison
Sulfur Salt
3
New Methods

• In 1891 Herman Frasch obtained a patent to use a
  new method of producing sulfur
• Superheated water was used to dissolve sulfur
  crystals
• The sulfurous liquid would then be pumped into
  vats where it would cool and solidify to form
  elemental sulfur
• This new method greatly reduced the need of
  importation of sulfur
• It allowed huge quantities of sulfur to be mined
  at one time
• It cut the domestic cost of sulfur by 40
• In 1908 Fraschs patent expired and Texas
  investors adapted and used it in their sulfur
  plants along the Gulf Coast

4
New Management

• In the early 1910s, with a war raging in Europe,
  sulfur was in high demand and the Gulf Sulfur
  Company was begging for expansion.
• It was soon bought by W.B. Thompson, Bernard
  Baruch, and J.P. Morgan and its name was changed
  to Texas Gulf Sulfur Company (TGS)
• Soon after, the Texas Gulf Sulfur Plant was born
• In October of that same year the company town of
  Gulf was created
• In 1922 the Texas Gulf Sulfur Company acquired
  the Boling Dome mineral rights, which was
  estimated to hold about 45 million tons of sulfur
• As a result, they created a new company town and
  named it Newgulf.

5
Utilization of Sour Gas

• Later, TGS became able to extract sulfur from a
  substance called sour gas (hydrogen sulfide in
  natural gas)
• Up until now, sour gas was unusable and toxic,
  and production companies burned it
• In 1941 other companies, along with TGS,
  developed a method to create free sulfur from
  hydrogen sulfide.
• The Newgulf plant first created sulfur production
  on a large scale

Sour gas
Sour Gas Pipeline
6
Expansion

• WWII increased a demand for sulfur and their
  production rate nearly doubled
• When the war ended they continued to expand
• In August 1949, TGS became the first United
  States company to acquire rights and a contract
  to mine sulfur in Mexico.
• They entered the oil industry
• In 1953 in Ohio they opened the sulfur industrys
  first distribution terminal for liquid sulfur and
  in the same year introduced the first volume
  shipping of liquid sulfur on the Mississippi
  River
• They commissioned the first liquid sulfur tanker
  in the world and named the Marine Sulfur Queen

7
A Growing Company

• By 1964 it held the mineral rights to 30,000
  acres in North Carolina which held about 10
  billion tons of phosphate rock
• Invested 80 million in Lee Creek Plant, which
  makes sulfuric acid, super- phosphoric acid, and
  solid fertilizer.
• This was the largest project investment to date
  by TGS

Fertilizer
8
Texas Gulf Sulfur Today

• In April 1972, the Texas Gulf Sulfur Company
  changed its name again and became known as
  Texasgulf.
• by the mid 1970s two-thirds of Texasgulfs
  income came from Canadian mines
• In 1980 the company prospered
• By the 1990s, about 75 of the sulfur was used in
  fertilizer products
• The name of the Company was Texasgulf but the
  activities and properties owned were global.
• In 1995 Texasgulf was purchased by the Potash
  Corporation for over 800 million

9
Picture Bibliography

• http//www.gc.maricopa.edu/earthsci/imagearchive/S
  ULFUR1.jpg
• http//www.science.uwaterloo.ca/cchieh/cact/fig/s
  ulfur.jpg
• www.glaciercaves.com/html/photog_1.HTM
• www.bermuda-triangle.org/html/miami.html
• www.texasescapes.com/.../Newgulf-Texas.htm
• http//homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/slkarner/W
  P06/WP06_478.HTML
• http//www.osseismic.com/Images/Environmental/Pipe
  line_Venting.jpg
• www.shorpy.com/node/1936?size_original
• http//www.mii.org/Minerals/Minpics1/Rock20Salt.j
  pg
• http//kriste11er.com/school_work/07-08/science/mi
  neral_project/image/sulfur.jpg
• http//www.teara.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/4E4F3278-2FF
  1-45FE-BD72-F14D9AAE14A2/100693/p5258atl.jpg
• http//i134.photobucket.com/albums/q115/2fatcats_2
  007/AbandonedSulphurWorksNewGulfTexa-1.jpg
• http//www.payvand.com/news/08/aug/Assaluyeh-Aghaj
  ari-gas-pipeline.jpg
• http//4vacations.com/maps/images/mexico-map.gif
• http//midwestpoet.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/oil
  -rig.jpg
• http//content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thum
  b/e/e7/300px-Phosphate-ooids.jpg
• http//www.cse-ipg.com/images/Fertilizer.jpg
• http//www.ncrepublic.org/images/north-carolina.gi
  f
• http//www.world-atlas.us/world-map.gif

10
Text Bibliography

• Hudgins, Merle R. Texas Gulf. September 30,
  2008. http//www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/ar
  ticles/TT/dktgq.html
• Texas Settlement Region. Texas Gulf Sulfur
  Company-Newgulf. November 3, 2008.
• http//www.texas-settlement.org/markers/wharton/3
  7.html