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John D. Rockefeller entered the natural gas business in West Virginia in 1898 when his Standard Oil formed Hope Natural Gas Company, the predecessor of Dominion Transmission Corporation and Hope Gas, which today do business as Dominion Hope. In that same year, Standard Oil also formed the East Ohio Gas Company. Hope produced gas in West Virginia and piped it to the Ohio border, while East Ohio piped it from there and sold it in Canton and Akron.

Facing action by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1943, Standard Oil combined its gas subsidiaries, including Hope, under a new, independent gas company, Consolidated Natural Gas. In 1965, Hope Natural Gas Company and New York State Natural Gas Corporation merged to form Consolidated Gas Supply Corporation. The company centralized its distribution operations in West Virginia and retained the Hope Natural Gas Company name for that division.

After another reorganization in 1984, the distribution operations became a separate company, Hope Gas, and the interstate gas transmission operations became Consolidated Natural Gas Transmission Corporation. Both companies were part of the Pittsburgh-based Consolidated Natural Gas system companies. Then, in February 2000, CNG and Dominion Resources, a Richmond, Virginia, company, merged to form Dominion.

In 2004, Dominion Hope provided natural gas service to 439 communities in West Virginia in 32 of West Virginia's 55 counties. In that year Dominion Hope operated 3,000 miles of pipeline and one compressor station and employed 284 workers in West Virginia. Headquartered in Clarksburg, Dominion Hope's major service areas include the communities of Morgantown, Fairmont, Clarksburg, Weston, Summersville, Richwood, Parkersburg, St. Marys, Sistersville, and Paden City.

— Authored by Gary Nicholas

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Cite This Article

Nicholas, Gary. "Hope Gas." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 08 February 2024. Web. Accessed: 20 September 2024.

08 Feb 2024