It makes a lot of sense to me. I work in the oil/gas industry and I value the lives of my family.
If they allowed you to fill a tank in your home, you could migrate the gas to your car in minutes.
And just how do you think that magic would occur? Do you have a compressor of a couple thousand horsepower or do you already have the gas storage of thousands of pounds of pressure in your house?
Natural gas does not have to be refined,
It has too be processed. Wellhead natural gas contains many contaminants that have to be removed to become pipeline/consumer quality gas.
http://www.naturalgas.org/naturalgas/production.asp
Natural Gas is a good energy source, very cost effective but let us not pretend it is magic.
No one is saying its magic.
Engineers have told me there is no difference in safety between allowing a CNG tank in your car stored in your garage, and having a tank in your home. So if the government says it is safe enough to have in your car - where you drive around at high speeds on a highway, and then store it in your garage, it should be safe enough to put it underground and at a higher pressure. (Natural gas is safer than gasoline for driving!)
Compressors are expensive - but GE is now working on one for the home and they will bring the price way down. This is already happening.
Processing natural gas, is no where near the cost of refining oil, and no where near the environmental nightmare of building a refinery. To say those things are equivalent is totally wrong!