Document: Deep South; Pipeline to progress

Document deep south Los Angles and cotton barns and factories in the heart of Dixie. A revealing story of progress in the area documented with on the spot recordings and produced by the radio broadcasting service extension division. University of Alabama. For the next 30 minutes you will make a transcribed trip through the Deep South. You will see the significance of a new industrial self changing self you will see how determined people are nature's plug into prosperity a move that more than ever is making itself felt in our nation's economy. Pipeline to progress.

Listen. Would you like to hear the end of the story now. This that you hear the lively Goodling sound of liquid filling a huge underground tank is really how this story ends. It began last week you remember when you stood and gazed at a distant horizon dotted with barracks. You were deep in Louisiana marsh country then you were learning about the auto industry about its men its methods its machinery the planning and preparation that go into drilling a wildcat Well you learned of the importance of the petroleum industry not only to the nation but to the south in particular. You discovered that eight of the 11 deep south states produce oil produce one seventh of the nation's total value

added more than eight hundred and nine million dollars. But this is only part of the story. The start of the story from the GEs reservoir to the underground tank. What happens you want to know. Follow then seemingly in little solder is emerging out of oil. Most of the stuff. Reaching out straight and firm and direct. Louisiana from Mississippi or Arkansas reaching out and arriving at length at its first stop. The refinery. Barrel upon barrel of crude oil gushing forth. From what he

saw oil that once produced only cotton more sugar again. All too frequently nothing at all. And how many miles it traveled. Not too far for here in THE LAND OF DIXIE you find some of the nation's best refineries are located. And so as you follow these pipelines over fields through forest and the rivers. You arrive also at the point of determination. Of vast city of tanks and towering installations. Here the crude oil will undergo many changes. Were developed many products here high above the Mississippi River. A giant industry works around the clock. With its results felt around the world. You're a doctor want to be Joe. Himself a geologist an oil man. As you learn of the modern administration. You give your name to the receptionist. You notice that she has a Louisiana French accent. And you take a seat and

wait. You told the visitors and employees are screened very carefully. And this is one industry vital to the nation's defense. The girl at the desk the girl with a French accent tells you and Dr. Jones It is now possible to see the plant superintendent. Of the sixth floor you step out of the elevator and start for his own. Lab. One of their. Video on the go cart followed up. I have yet to hear. This refinery. And we have to go on this. Planet. No superintendent. Because I think you can access some of the questions that we have. Well this refinery is quite a large one I think all told it probably covers around 11 hundred acres.

I let. It's a big area. How many. People do you employ. Yeah. At the present time we're stabilized at about 8000 people. But already you find two employees. By far the largest part of them are local residents. Some of them live as far as maybe 30 40 miles from town. Now when it comes to technical people. We pretty well scour the leading engineering schools in the eastern half of the United States to select our engineering graduates. And of course we don't want to overlook our fine Southern engineering school. We like to give preference to them. That's that rationing then on highly specialized. Right you have to get men and women. Why have they may be available. That's right there is an overall security to engineering graduates in the country today so we have to pretty well beat the bushes to recruit our engineering tell southern industry providing career

opportunities for Southern men and women as well as the use of the nation. And they pay well down south you find. Well this one plant alone has an annual payroll counting employee benefits amounting to 50 million dollars. But back to the story of oil. How does your comment to the plant we saw this one pipeline that seem to be headed this way are there any of those. Yes we have several pipelines feeding the refinery. A matter of fact we get most of our crude by pipeline. I'd say maybe 90 percent comes in I would have to run. Coming here mostly by barge and from some of the isolated producing areas which are smaller producing areas by tanker. How much crude do you process in a day. Well at the present time we're processing right around 200 60000

barrels a day. I don't know whether you've. Been in the refinery yet but you know we've just come here to out of sixteen. Thousand barrels a day. Rough. Percentage. There of the nation's total would that be. Well it would be right around four percent of the total domestic production or less at me as one of their larger refineries then and in the United States. It's not the largest it's certainly among the largest and we think everything considered the diversity of products crude run area covered a number of people when all those factors are taken into consideration. We think we're probably right at that now that I can sadly believe now that this is high. Industrialized there are plants scattered all around you know. Do they have any connection

with this operation of yours. Yes I would say they had quite a. Quite a great connection with our operation here we're right in the center of this industrial area. There are several plants that we consider our close neighbors. Most cases we supply them some of the raw materials that they require. And on the other hand we're customers for their principal product. So does lack of B just like a big one can't get along without the other. Our. War of the racket reverberating some is reach over here you step out of the back entrance of the building. Beyond the brick structures before you stretch is a crowded horizon. Abstract with giant geometric figures in this city of sound and significance many products besides motor hauling gasoline are made you remember the plant

superintendent saying we were totalling up the other day the number of different products that we make and we got up to over a hundred products. Yes here stands the world's most diversified refinery and one of the largest high above the east bank of the Mississippi. And there's no standard oil company who sold this ground for the very same reasons that early explorers fought to keep it safe well above flood stage. It is ideal climate. It's near raw materials and natural needs to accessible to River and ocean transport as well as other transportation facilities and communication. These reasons have made it the envy of nations. Now of the industrialist or this plant forms only a fraction of the industrial whole of Baton Rouge City of the seven flags. And today the South's most rapidly expanding City of Industry. You have a button a badge of identification that allows you to see the refinery in operation and since it covers eleven hundred acres

you stop by the motor pool and check out a station wagon and as the executive is with you he gives names to the metallic shapes that spout noise and Steyn are right. We make more of our space our most eloquently by our media tell it is commonly. Played on out here in a very desolate set where the bird goes and the first to be split up the big pipes down here on a lamp or building where no one else around Mark heard and shut down some of the older glass of bacon. I've scaled this city of sound as one giant checkerboard laid off in municipal blocks with paved avenues linking each human to this vast operations are here we are now one of the bagpipes. News there

was a day you discover when too much gasoline was produced. Yes why it was even considered a byproduct. I was in the days before the horseless carriage when kerosene was Petroleum's major product simple distillation their skimming process obtain this type of fuel out of every hundred gallons of crude oil. Only 20 gallons of gasoline were distilled to 80 gallons of other products mostly kerosene with the development of the automobile However gasoline was pushed to the forefront and this need in 1913 brought about the first commercially successful cracking process that is bringing to bear higher temperatures and higher pressures to decompose the heavy apportions of crude oil into lighter products. That may be possible to make more gasoline not only more gasoline but better gasoline. And now you're standing before the first stage in the breaking down of crude oil into its many varied uses. The pipe's tails.

Part of the project on the bridge to get off Martha's back. I cannot imagine Don down here in this next area where we have a tracking polls some of them we call family cause because they get cranky all by heat. Some of them are salt crackers. The catalyst that. Kept crackers of the newest innovation to a modern refinery and the most impressive towering 240 feet a massive hulk of pipe and platforms and wanting a cylindrical body. But now you're passing the thermo cracking course your guide points them out. BHARMAL practice air while they're still operating and modern are

the ones that stick out in the middle of the refinery area at the heart of a modern refinery. Help us to make gasoline and also furnish raw materials for many of the other operations. And I am now I got. Laughed at by. A Oh and all of. The good 0 0 the past. 3 0 and we're now going out that big contract that you're in it. And now your moment. This unit got got a lot going on. Let me bring you in at. About. The. Camp. Because America wrote all of that at the refinery and I think the material that we become aghast

that anything heavier than the rule that is taken off the cuff last. Month by. The way the way that all. The cast Iola and things will get and I am going to marry her but the refinery and they can't agree about what would be your candidate. Now many me and. I was looking around at the track. Yeah you know Barack Obama and. I mean to me anyway. Islam already operating operational thing the AMA sucks playing the man. I meet. Him. And hear him on ask knowing exactly what he's doing. One of those men is well trained and is expected to know all the details of the job and I think I can see that it sends the wrong balance last. WEEK OH GOOD thing. They find out from those L.A. crack units that we let that.

Go into gasoline planning and some of the gases and light materials that come out of that cracking process are collected and separated for U.S. air as finished products or for other purposes down here and this next plant will look at a light and a polymer plant. It takes gases that used to be wasted as a molecule are just burning out out Clare's around the refinery back in the old days and first saw the waste waste gases and available products LPGA for fuel and for heating purposes. I call it a motor gasoline. Many other good delight in the column a plant. An awful lot of hype gathered all around

or at the front of the crowd at government one bar to bar area. Now what do you do. You gather light hydrocarbon produce at the refinery unit and convert them into a marketable pot out of the dark approach that. Bowed out and lined out a pair around me and think that bam. Bam a break and then it gathered in and reap fans gathered any operation iraqi produce body to operate. Go down to a low ball blend the area and on down there. Monitoring down there you say you are a market basket lowered Nonono get the right action are not here. Old Man River serves the refinery Well barge tows deliver 37

percent of the refinery output to cities in the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. But in addition to providing easy economical transportation old man Mississippi provides water for other uses. His office building on the right. If we go over the block down to the river here at the office of the conservation department it's their job to cut down on undersea that. Any River or any other body of water around here are at a loss are kept low they have a boil water pollution is kept down to this refinery use a lot of river water as much water as all the major cities of Louisiana combined you find including New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

It's used for cooling purposes. Your guide tells you that it takes out heat enough to heat all the homes and buildings in a city of one hundred twenty five thousand people bought two whole years. Right now you are standing on a dock 2400 feet long watching two tankers being loaded. Panic yes to me to be frank. I'm going to ask you what I don't know what I'm trying. Five hundred and twenty five feet on what products refinery

gasoline gasoline how much do you carry. Hundred thirty five thousand barrels. There are about half of that ship coming in. This family and boy. You will watch the magic of. A gasoline tanker and. Smoke her screw turn her problems slowly into

mid-stream. Tomorrow. Pass through the gateway of the Deep South. Out into the Gulf into the Atlantic. And the captain make chart a course for the phone book. Whatever the destination you yourself can see that the Course has been charted for progress. And that the costs originate from the heart of Dixie. Eh eh. From reservoir to refinery to the resourcefulness of nations. That's the cause of the something the oil and gas but it's first call of course is to serve the needs of the new industrial salt then they want it like this is the tipping field for

the burning. Many are waiting to go running it here along the way. This particular pipeline plant makes it into a marketing area. Yeah they'd be Alabama your can manage a South Carolina well. An early product of the same line and plug one binding. There are and there's a very small amount of mixing at the price. Just as you followed the crude oil into the refinery you follow the finished product out again. By way of the underground artery. I blinds would be charged straight to firm and direct to impart on terminal was

a further distribution from here it will go to smaller sometimes by truck sometimes by rail. You're standing near the spur track of an important terminal on your mound the Alabama. It's a small community mound. It could reasonably be nickel South Carolina or rentals Indiana or a small town in any state. The citizens of Mongol will not likely look upon this fenced in area and fuel storage tanks as a place of importance. They grow cotton raise cattle in Malibu. But you know its importance. You've seen the crude oil brought from the ground. You've seen it refined. You followed it mile by mile across many states here to mounds to this point. Yeah yeah I would yellow to call that ranch a welder.

Yeah yeah yeah right. How much larger. And I taking the loading loaded. To the plate. Go out and try it with gasoline and other products. It comes and

goes out on a railroad car and then ran up that way your trucks. It's a matter of economics. Come to think of it petroleum means more than industry means more than plants and the power to produce petroleum means people as well. And private enterprise and it means a higher standard of living a future of security. It means jobs wages and weekends in the country. In the twinkle of an eye it can mean defense a weapon of war. But as far as the eye can see a performance piece for petroleum can mean schools and churches and playgrounds means hospitals and highways and business hops from Washington to Waukegan and one hour south land is rich in oil and gas. It's not alone in the realization of the wealth or the effects of

the petroleum industry are far reaching. Yes it's all a matter of economics. Even as you drive in your local service station say Fill er up. Man point that out please. Gasoline is taxed by nonsense so gallant nonsense on the gallon. And that's divided up between the federal state and the county and city you know how much to get out. Well the federal government is to stand. The state gets sick sans any county and city together gets once in Russia a lot of tax holiday spending that money what it is to be used only roads own mental state and city. But I'm going to gallons a month. What do

we get out here on the station around. Point out gallons per mile. Sure a lot of it yes. Well that's about it. That's the story. You visited a refinery. You followed the crude from well to consumer and now we're having gassed up your car you paused to watch a tanker truck replenish the service station supply. As you listen to the sound of gasoline filling this huge underground tank you think back over what you've seen what you heard and what you learned. And you realize the south has come a long way. By way of petroleum and that it still has a full tank with places to go. So Liz is not the end after all. But really again. This has been a program line of document deep cells a

series of actuality documentaries depicting the increasing importance of the South and the economic development of our nation. This week pipeline to progress part two of the petroleum story your narrator was Walt Whittaker document Deep South is written and produced by Roy Bannerman with Dr. Walter B Jones as a senior consultant. Dokument deep sols is presented by the radio broadcasting services extension division University of Alabama and is made possible by our grant in aid from the fund for adult education. An independent agency established by the Ford family. And now this is King's bars reminding you that this has been a radio

presentation at the University of Alabama. This is the network.