National Fuel Gas was one of the first gas utility companies in the United States, and so they have been the first to create some new technologies. Engineers at the company discovered that empty underground gas fields could be used to store gas that has been taken from the ground somewhere else. Thus, the first such storage facility in the US was set up at Zoar Field, about forty miles south of Buffalo. This turned out to be a good financial decision for NFG in the 1940s and 50s, when increased demand for natural gas led to long pipelines in the eastern states being connected to new pipelines and fields in the southwestern states. NFG could then buy huge amounts of cheaper summer gas from the southwest, pipe it to the New York storage fields, pump it down into the ground, then take it back out when demand and prices went up in the winter months.