MasterResource focuses on the political economy of the energy industries. But there is also the unheralded, underappreciated progress of market entrepreneurship in free societies to make modern energies affordable and available for myriad uses.

The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS), under the direction of Bruce Wells, is dedicated to the preservation of such history. With permission, a number of data points for September are reproduced below (see here, here, and here).

September 1, 1862: Union Taxes Manufactured Gas

To help fund the Civil War, a new federal tax was placed on manufactured gas, a popular fuel for street and residential lighting. Manufactured gas companies provided street and residential lighting.

Manufactured gas (produced by heating coal) was taxed up to 15 cents per thousand cubic feet. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle quickly accused the local gas company of passing on the tax, which “shifts from its shoulders its share of the burdens the war imposes and places it directly on their customers.”…

Ed. Note: Back in May 2012, David Boaz of the Cato Institute reminisced about Robert Bradley’s 1996 treatise on oil and gas. His post follows:

At MasterResource, a free-market energy blog, Alex Epstein posts a glowing tribute to the 1996 Cato book Oil, Gas, and Government by Robert L. Bradley, Jr. (who happens to be a co-blogger at MasterResource). Oil, Gas, and Government is surely the longest book Cato ever published, and nobody knows better than I do—well, Rob Bradley does—how much work went into researching, writing, editing, and publishing it.

In these days of blogs and tweets, we’re used to consuming information in very small bites. But one of the fundamental roles of think tanks is to produce long-form research, not just talking points and congressional briefings. And Oil, Gas, and Government is very long form—1,997 pages in two volumes.…

“If we believe that somehow the market is going to take care of this, that you put a price on carbon and everything will sort itself out, or that we can shame companies into doing it, then I think we’re kidding ourselves. This needs a very significant interventionist approach and all industries have to be part of the intervention.”

– Ben van Beurden, CEO, Royal Dutch Shell. Quoted in Akshat Rathi and Laura Hurst, “Look Who’s Talking About Zero Emissions.” (Bloomberg: June 9, 2020)

Enron’s Ken Lay. BP’s John Browne. Duke Energy’s James E. Rogers. T. Boone Pickens. GE’s Jeff Immelt. And now Shell’s Ben van Beurden.

Welcome to the swamp of political correctness when industry leaders morph into apologists for mineral energies and endorse open-ended government intervention for forced energy transformation from dense, reliable energies to dilute, intermittent ones.…

“Is Trump right about the more-working-class-view that water efficient plumbing fixtures and appliances are unnecessary and costly?”

“If a household were to conserve 25 percent of its indoor water it would amount to 7/100ths (0.07) of one-acre-foot of total system water in a year; a mere drop in the bucket.”

At a December 6, 2019 White House meeting with the Small Business Roundtable, Donald Trump made the following remarks about “opening up” national standards for water efficient bathroom fixtures and appliances:

We’re using common sense.  We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on — in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it — and you don’t get any water.