Natural gas vehicle bill heads to Perry’s desk

Fuel Fix ^ | May 27, 2011 | Tom Fowler

[thackney]

The Texas Senate sent a bill to Gov. Rick Perry’s Desk Thursday afternoon that will establish incentives for companies to buy natural gas-fueled vehicles and help fund fueling stations in the “Texas Triangle” between Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Ft. Worth.

Senate Bill 20 would redirect the funds from the existing Texas Emissions Reduction Program – which replaces or retrofits heavy-duty construction equipment and other vehicles that emit high levels of pollution with less noxious equipment — toward those that specifically use natural gas. Here’s a summary of the bill by the House Research Organization.

Natural gas producers have been big supporters of the measure (and similar legislation in other states and at the federal level) because it would expand the market for natural gas, which has suffered from low prices in recent years due to ample domestic production.

The measures have come to a head in recent weeks as billionaires T. Boone Pickens and the Koch brothers have funded big lobbying efforts on opposite ends of the issue — Pickens on the pro side and the oil refinery-owning Kochs on the anti.

Not all the spending is taking place on K Street or in Austin, however. Apache Corp. recently donated a $1.5 million compressed natural gas fueling station to the City of Houston to run a new fleet of shuttle buses from the city-owned parking lot at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

And Houston-based Waste Management Inc. has been aggressively expanding the use of CNG in its fleet of trash trucks.

Jim Hackett, CEO of Anadarko Petroleum and Chairman of America’s Natural Gas Alliance, praised passage of Senate Bill 20, singling out Sen. Tommy Williams (R–The Woodlands), Rep. Mark Strama (D-Austin), House Speaker Joe Straus and Lt. Governor David Dewhurst for the bill’s passage.

“This legislation will foster the development of a Texas Clean Transportation Triangle by increasing the number of natural gas-refueling stations and replacing the heaviest fuel-hungry diesel trucks with natural gas-powered trucks, thus improving Texas’ air quality and economy,” Hackett said in a statement.

“At least 10 percent of the U.S. transportation sector travels through the Triangle each year, and the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates this number will increase significantly over the next 25 years,” Hackett added.

Using more nat-gas vehicles in the region over a four-year period would be the equivalent of taking more than 175,000 cars off Texas highways, he said.

[safetysign]

Obama will oppose as this would hurt his fellow Muslims.

[Peter from Rutland]

The entire commercial trucking fleet in this country should go natural gas. Think of how much oil->deisel fuel that would be.

[LOC1]

On an energy equivalent basis, natural gas costs about $25 per barrel, as compared to crude oil at about $100 per barrel. Seems there is a pretty strong economic incentive to use natural gas as a replacement for either diesel or gasoline derived from crude oil. Am surprised that government incentives are required.

[Jack of all Trades]

Actually, the EPA has recently made it easier to certify NGV and some other alternative fuel conversions. In some cases it looks like it’s just a matter of filing some documentation.

[thackney]

I think the problem is there is investment required for both the supplier and the user.

A trucking company doesn’t want to invest the money for CNG conversions or new purchases, unless there is a stable supply of CNG service stations available.

And the services stations don’t want to invest the money for CNG delivery systems unless there is a significant amount of CNG vehicles in use to create enough demand.

I suspect the growth will first come from fleet services like UPS where vehicles return to a home base and they could supply their own fuel.

[SouthTexas]

Bought a pick-up once that had both propane and gasoline capabilities. Ended up pulling the tank, hoses, electronics, etc off because it took up too much space.

May work fine for larger vehicles, but it’s restrictive on smaller ones. Granted, this was 20 years ago and an after market installation, but a 120 gallon tank is a 120 gallon tank.

[dusttoyou]

If and when there are local fueling stations for CNG, the need for large tanks will go away.

[SouthTexas]

Maybe. Part of my problem was the “dual fuel” capabilities. Roughly two 20 gallon gasoline tanks and on 120 gallon propane. At the flip of a switch, I could go from gasoline to propane.

It did require a timing change, thus the electronics and this was not cheap. Single fuel source would be cheaper and as noted, a fleet returning to a “home base” may make sense but it’s not going to be anything that can happen overnight for everyone else.

[GonzoGOP]

On an energy equivalent basis, natural gas costs about $25 per barrel, as compared to crude oil at about $100 per barrel. Seems there is a pretty strong economic incentive to use natural gas as a replacement for either diesel or gasoline derived from crude oil.

And there are God awful amounts of it. And when the land based deposits run low you can use the enormous deposits of methane hydrate on the ocean floor. Sure its hard to get at but there is so much of it that it would be darn hard to run out of it. And then you can make methane from sewage and animal waste. Finally it is easy to turn coal into methane. And we have a lot of coal.

Let them rave about peak oil. With methane the answer is if we run short we will just make more.