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Over the years, we've seen a number of suggested replacements for gasoline to fuel motorcycles – including steam, hydrogen, water and batteries. Now a moto maker is getting ready to launch what's billed as the world's first CNG motorcycle. CNG stands for Compressed Natural Gas, which as its name suggests is "produced by compressing natural gas to less than 1% of its volume at standard atmospheric pressure." It can be used as a fuel source for internal combustion engines, where a cylindrical tank feeds the gas through fuel lines via a pressure regulator before reaching the combustion chamber to be...

Ridiculously overbudget? Check. Unnecessary? Check. Impossible to support in the long run? Check. Zero accountability? Check and double-check. If a novelist wrote this as a satire of government operations, there wouldn’t be an editor who’d buy it — not for 43 cents, and certainly not for $43 million: Nearly $43 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money was spent on building a gas station in Afghanistan — 140 times more than it should have cost, according to a government watchdog.The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also said that one of the most “troubling” issues is how the Department of Defense...

American taxpayers are on the hook for a $43 million gas station constructed in Afghanistan -- a price tag that’s about $42.5 million higher than it should’ve been, and the Department of Defense can’t explain why, according to a new government report.

The price of energy is dirt cheap right now: U.S. natural gas prices are at their lowest levels since 2012, and oil prices worldwide are near six-year lows . Leave it to the Pentagon to make the cost of delivering cheap energy ridiculously expensive. A compressed natural gas automobile filling station in Afghanistan that should have cost about $500,000 ended up costing $43 million, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The watchdog agency said Monday it discovered the cost overrun during a review of the Defense Department's Task Force for Stability and Business Operations ( TFBSO...

Ford Motor Co. says the 2016 F-150 pickup will be available with a 5.0-liter V8 engine that can run on compressed natural gas or propane, part of a growing lineup of CNG vehicles from the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker. Ford’s commercial vehicle customers, in particular, have been asking for more trucks and vans that can run on compressed natural gas because it lowers their fleet operating costs and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. CNG sells for an average of $2.11 per gallon of gasoline equivalent, as of April 30, 2015, and is as low as $1 in some parts of the country,...

Natural gas still hasn't really caught on as a fuel for private passenger vehicles, but it's slowly finding more success in commercial applications. The selection of natural-gas commercial vehicles is much larger, and using the fuel in fleets makes more sense from an environmental-impact standpoint than it does for individual cars. One company catering to this market is Mack Trucks, which announced that the natural-gas versions of its Pinnacle series trucks will get a handful of updates this year. These include a new Eaton UltraShift Plus automated transmission and Wingman Advanced safety system. The latter is essentially an adaptive cruise...

While everyone is watching to see how low oil prices will affect U.S. shale drillers, natural gas production continues to rise. Each month, the U.S. posts new production highs (see chart), and 2014 is shaping up to be a record year for natural gas drillers. With production ratcheting upwards, the U.S. has been able to achieve record levels of storage injections, building back inventories after last winter walloped the east coast and depleted supplies. The abundance of natural gas is allowing utilities to increasingly burn the fuel in power plants for electricity – a well-known trend that continues to accelerate....

Four years ago, Kirk Swallow received state money to set up a compressed natural gas filling facility at the Rifle Shell station he co-owns. The Colorado Energy Office, then under Gov. Bill Ritter and known as the Governor’s Energy Office, gave Swallow’s company a $675,000 grant — money from fines collected from companies that violated state regulations. Swallow said he chipped in about $300,000. But, in June, Swallow had to permanently shut down the CNG pumps at 101 Railroad Ave., in Rifle, Colo. He said he was losing money because of increased competition, excessive electricity fees to run the pumps...

In addition to the fueling problem, workers for Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources and Colorado Parks and Wildlife may have difficulties doing their jobs because of Compressed Natural Gas fuel tanks on trucks, ... When state fleet was pushing CPW to buy the vehicles, there were concerns for the employees out in the field. “That is additional cost to the agency and inefficiency,” CPW fleet manager Michelle Arnold wrote in January 2013. “The decreased hauling capacity because of CNG fueling tanks in the back of the bed of the pickups is going to severely limit if not totally preclude the...

Colorado has so far spent $8 million in taxpayer money on nearly 240 compressed natural gas vehicles, with dozens of them stationed in places where there is no compressed natural gas filling stations, Watchdog.org has learned. And the state expects to buy more CNG vehicles, costing $7,000 to $11,000 more than comparable gasoline-fueled vehicles, in the 2015 fiscal year. Many of them are destined for state facilities that also have no current CNG filling station nearby, state records show. Because of the lack of fueling stations, state workers apparently continue to run many of the vehicles on more expensive gasoline,...

Morgan Stanley has quietly filed plans to build and run one of the first U.S. compressed natural gas export facilities, the first sign the bank is plunging back into physical commodity markets even as it sells its physical oil business. In a 23-page application to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy submitted in May, the Wall Street bank outlined a proposal to build, own and operate a compression and container loading facility near Freeport, Texas, which will have capacity to ship 60 billion cubic feet a year of compressed natural gas (CNG). While the size of the...

Though natural gas is abundant in the U.S., whether it can serve as a financially viable transportation fuel is a difficult question to answer. Commercial fleet operators from across the country this week are in Houston discussing the economics of natural gas, which often is touted as a less expensive, cleaner-burning alternative to gasoline. But industry officials at the Natural Gas Vehicles USA conference say despite their hopes for natural gas, converting fleets to run on the fuel isn’t always easy. Though the fuel has its advantages, the finances of making it work for fleets don’t always add up. “There...

Drivers will now be able to get up to $2,500 in state incentives to help purchase alternative-fuel vehicles, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality announced this week. Officials with TCEQ said it’s the first time the agency has offered an alternative fuel vehicle incentive program specifically geared towards light-duty vehicles. The incentive program was part of state legislation that was approved by the state legislature a year ago. Joe Walton, manager of the implementation grants section at TCEQ, said previous efforts to launch the program had sputtered as they’ve failed to get funding. The new program will provide up to...

Compressed natural gas vehicles consumed a record 2.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas in Texas in 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration. That makes sense with all the new CNG fueling stations popping up and more and more fleets converting to natural gas. Also, industrial consumption reached a 10-year high in Texas, a sign that the petrochemical industry is booming again, according to the EIA. More than 1.5 trillion cubic feet were consumed for industrial purposes in Texas, the most since 2004. The amount of natural gas consumed for electric power generation dropped 6.6 percent from 2012 to...

When Ford announced last summer it would sell a version of its F-150 pickup specially made to run on natural gas, many saw it as a watershed moment. Few light-duty vehicles used by everyday consumers are available in a natural gas configuration. Suddenly, the most popular model in America’s best-selling line of vehicles would come in a version that could run on the relatively cheap, clean fuel. But early sales numbers show that the public isn’t exactly clamoring for an F-150 powered by compressed natural gas. Ford readies the trucks for CNG conversion on the assembly line, and contractors later...

Texans increased their use of natural gas to fuel cars and trucks in 2013, but reduced its use to power lights and appliances, according to new federal data. Natural gas used for vehicle fuel in Texas jumped by more than 16 percent between 2012 and 2013, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show. Meanwhile, less electricity was generated from gas in 2013, down by nearly 7 percent. That reversed a trend seen in recent years as utilities shifted from coal-fired to natural gas-fired power plants to take advantage of low-cost natural gas, with its price in the Untied States...

The number of light-duty vehicles running on natural gas will more than double over the next decade to 39.8 million traveling on roads worldwide, according to a new report by research firm Navigant. Despite the rapid growth, natural gas will continue to have a modest market share compared to gasoline and diesel in 2023, fueling just 2.6 percent of the cars and light-duty trucks on the road, Navigant projects. A significant number of natural gas vehicles are already on the road in Brazil, Pakistan, Argentina and India, the report notes. But popularity is growing in North America, as well, driven...

Natural gas has become the fuel of choice for several large companies with vehicle fleets. Now, smaller firms are beginning to catch on to the trend, too. With a little nudging, companies that don’t have their own refueling stations are finding ways to start moving their goods and workers on natural gas. “The fact that it’s $2 a gallon cheaper makes it a no-brainer,” said Mike Little, director of transportation for Bryan-based Mid South Baking, which delivers buns and other products to quick-serve restaurants across the South. On an energy equivalent bases, diesel costs around $3.65 per gallon in Houston...

Energy density and the cost, weight, and size of onboard energy storage are important characteristics of fuels for transportation. Fuels that require large, heavy, or expensive storage can reduce the space available to convey people and freight, weigh down a vehicle (making it operate less efficiently), or make it too costly to operate, even after taking account of cheaper fuels. Compared to gasoline and diesel, other options may have more energy per unit weight, but none have more energy per unit volume. On an equivalent energy basis, motor gasoline (which contains up to 10% ethanol) was estimated to account for...

Trucking fleet operators in the Northwest are showing growing interest in filling up with natural gas instead of diesel. Two reasons: natural gas is cheaper and burns cleaner than the gasoline or diesel that goes into most vehicles. The problem is there are very few filling stations for natural gas. Cleaner air, lower costs, limited infrastructure Take delivery truck driver Corey Schaller. He has one last stop before he can call it a day. He has to refill the gas tank of the beer truck he drives for Kent, Washington-based Click Wholesale Distributing. But there are just a few places...