Iran is converting cars to natural gas because they can hardly refine any of the oil they pump themselves. It must be shipped elsewhere to be turned into gasoline. So Iran ends up importing more gasoline (as a percentage of use) than we do oil. Their government hugely subsidizes gasoline purchases by the populace, so this is actually costing them a lot of money they’d like to be keeping. So instead, they’ll try to use natural gas, which they also have a lot of and their own industries can produce without outside help.
Natural gas is not a very convenient fuel for use in automobiles because it is in a very non-dense gas form (of course) and you have to compress the heck out of it in order to store enough for the car to use, but its probably the third best practical fuel for such use (sugar-cane ethanol being the second most practical).
BTW, Mexico has a similar refining problem and imports a hell of a lot of its gasoline from us (after shipping us their oil).
Anyway, Pickens’ use of Iran as an example for natural gas as a transportation fuel is disingenuous. If Iran could refine their own oil, they would never bother with natural gas.
Agreed. The main thrust of Picken's investments in CLNE and WPRT is the conversion of heavy truck and bus diesel motors to cleaner burning, cheaper LNG/CNG.