Promotional Literature for Borger, Texas: 1947

Borger Texas has 16,337 citizens within the city limits, and 32,000 within a three mile radius. Borger is surrounded with industrial housing projects with from two to fifty families in each project. [The town of] Phillips is just two miles east of downtown Borger. Most of the employees of the Philips Petroleum refineries live there—5000 people. Buna Vista is three miles west of Borger’s main street. Most of the population of this community is employed by the B. F. Goodrich Synthetic Rubber Plant or the Phillips Petroleum butadiene refineries, which make the raw materials for the rubber. The building was under construction to house Frank Phillips College and Borger High School.

     Riverview Power Plant, of the Southwestern Public Service Company, is the largest power plant in Northwest Texas, having a total capacity of 39,000 kilowatts. The capacity of this plant will be almost doubled within the next twelve months, when it is expected that a new 30,000 kilowatt steam turbine, now under construction, will be placed in operation. (It is fueled by natural gas.)

     Texoma Natural Gas Company’s gas compressor is one of the largest installations of its kind in the world. The main engine room contains fifteen 1300 horsepower gas engine-driven compressors. The daily throughput of over 200,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas is collected in a gathering system which extends over four counties. The gas is compressed and then sent on its way through pipelines to the Chicago area.

     The B. F. Goodrich Chemical Company rubber plant is located at Bunavista. This plant which was built as war time emergency project is still operating at a production schedule beyond designed capacity. More than 45,000 long tons of crude rubber are produced here annually.

     Plains Butadiene Plant, operated by Phillips Petroleum Company, is located approximately 3 ½ miles west of Borger with housing for all rubber project employees, known as Bunavista. This plant has the second largest rated capacity of any petroleum feed butadiene producing unit built during the war period for production of synthetic rubber. It is producing about 60,000 long tons of butadiene annually, supplying Goodrich its requirement and shipping part of its output by tank car to other copolymer plants. This plant produces utilities, water, steam, and electricity, for both the copolymer plant and the butadiene plant.

     Carbon Black is a pigment and may be manufactured by any one of three processes from natural gas or by one process using oil. To the uninitiated, carbon black looks like lamp black or soot. In fact it was originally developed some 70 years ago as a substitute for lamp black.

     At that time, its primary use was in news ink and paint. However, about 30 years ago it was found to be an excellent reinforcing agent for rubber. At the present time, at least 90% of all carbon black produced goes to the rubber industry.

     Carbon black alone is responsible for the toughness and long wearing qualities of modern automobile tires. Synthetic rubber cannot even be used without carbon black mixed in.

     Next to rubber, news ink is the largest consumer of carbon black. Some other products in which carbon black is an ingredient are: paints, phonograph records, shoe polish, rubber soles and heels, harden hose, and telephones. Carbon is used to thaw ice, color concrete, and when combined with liquid oxygen, it makes a powerful explosive.

The J. M. Huber Corporation Ink Plant

The ink plant at Borger, operated by J. M. Huber Corporation manufactures only news ink (the ink newspapers and magazines are printed with).

     One of the principal ingredients in this type of ink is carbon black and the carbon black used in Huber ink is manufactured at the adjacent Huber carbon plant.

     Ink manufactured at Borger is shipped to widely-scattered points. Tank trucks hauling 24,000 pound loads regularly service Houston, Denver, and Fort Worth. Shipments by a special railroad tank car which carries 65,000 pounds of ink go to such places as Memphis, Tennessee, and Omaha, Nebraska. Smaller shipments by drums holding 450 pounds of ink go to many points in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado.

     The facts and figures of this industrial area are even more imposing than stories and pictures. In the year 1946, the record of this field was as follows:

361,000,000 pounds of carbon black manufactured,
681,000,000,000 cubic feet of gas produced,
469,000,000 gallons of natural gasoline and allied products,
33,300,000 barrels of crude oil produced,
768,600,000 gallons of refined products produced from refineries.

     Since 1940, the number of gas meters in use has increased 30%; the number of light connections has increased 40% and the number of water connections has increased almost 50%. School enrollment in five years since 1940 increased from 2347 students to 4223 students, almost double. Postal receipts more than doubled in the five years time. The income in dollars for Hutchinson County went from thirty-two million in 1940 to more than seventy-two million dollars in 1945. The average family income in the county was $2,961.39 for the year of 1945, based on a population of 40,000 people. Food purchases in Borger amounted to $217 per person, well over the national average of $149, the west South Central states’ figure of $110, and Texas’ $126 per capita.