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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
John D. Rockefeller I 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 Hope Gas. 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 (CNG) system companies. Then, in February 2000, CNG and Dominion Resources, a Richmond, Virginia, company, merged to form Dominion. In 2017, it became Dominion Energy. In 2022, Hope Gas, doing business as Dominion Energy West Virginia, was purchased by Hearthstone Company; it is headquartered in Morgantown, with an operational hub in Jane Lew.
Hope Gas provides natural gas services in 35 of West Virginia’s 55 counties, operating more than 3,200 miles of pipeline and a compressor station at Summersville. It moved its headquarters from Clarksburg to Morgantown in 2015. Dominion Hope’s major service areas include Morgantown, Fairmont, Clarksburg, Weston, Summersville, Richwood, Parkersburg, St. Marys, Sistersville, and Paden City.
In 2023, Hope Gas acquired Equitrans and People’s Gas WV, extending its footprint in the state.
Written by Gary Nicholas