CNG Vehicles in Utah, from the AP

Natural-gas vehicles hot in Utah, where the fuel is cheap

By PAUL FOY, AP Business WriterFri Apr 25, 3:06 AM ET

Troy Anderson was at the gas pump and couldn't have been happier, filling up at a rate of $5 per tank.

Anderson was paying 63.8 cents per gallon equivalent for compressed natural gas, making Utah a hot market for vehicles that run on the fuel.

It's the country's cheapest rate for compressed gas, according to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, and far less than the $3.56 national average price for a gallon of gasoline.

"I'm totally celebrating," crowed Anderson, a 44-year-old social worker, who picked up a used Honda Civic GX two months ago. "This is the greatest thing. I can't believe more people aren't talking about it. This is practically free."

Personal ownership of natural gas-fueled vehicles in Utah soared from practically nothing a few years ago to an estimated 5,000 vehicles today, overwhelming a growing refueling network, where compressors sometimes can't maintain enough pressure to fill tanks completely for every customer.

"Nobody expected this kind of growth. We got caught by the demand," said Gordon Larsen, a supervisor at Utah utility Questar Gas.

Utah has 91 stations, including 20 open to the public, mostly in the Salt Lake City area. The others are reserved for commercial drivers, such as school districts, bus fleets and big businesses such as a Coca-Cola distributor.

It's possible to drive the interstates between Rock Springs, Wyo., and St. George, Utah — a distance of 477 miles — and find 22 places to pull off and fill up.

California has more stations but prices are much higher there, the equivalent of $2.50 a gallon for gasoline.

"Utah has the cheapest prices by a big margin," said Richard Kolodziej, president of the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, whose members include utilities, Honda Motor Co., environmental groups and transit agencies.

Among major utilities outside of Alaska, Questar is the country's cheapest provider of natural gas for home use. It can offer compressed natural gas for cars even cheaper because of a federal tax credit.

The incentives don't stop there. Buyers of new and some used and converted vehicles can claim their own federal and state tax credits totaling up to $7,000 — nearly the extra cost of a CNG-fueled vehicle.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican, paid $12,000 of his own money to modify a state-owned Chevrolet Suburban last June.

"Converting to CNG gives us an opportunity to promote energy security and support a clean-burning alternative," Huntsman said in an e-mail Thursday. "Plus, who can beat running a Suburban on 63 cents a gallon?"

Mike Gaffa, a 39-year-old Continental Airlines reservation clerk, bought a used Ford F-150 pickup for $10,500. The vehicle came with a bonus: a previous owner added three extra tanks that fill the bed of his pickup.

"I don't even keep track of gasoline prices anymore," Gaffa boasted. "You'd be hard-pressed to find another vehicle that can go 600 miles on a fill-up."

And when he runs out of natural gas, he can switch over to a regular gasoline tank for a total range of more than 850 miles.

Utah has caught the attention of Honda, which can't make CNG-equipped Civic GXs fast enough at an Ohio plant. For now, it makes the compact available for sale to individuals only in California and New York, but executives say Utah could be next on their list.

Aside from fleet sales, no other automaker offers a CNG-powered car in the U.S.

Most Utah buyers must turn to the used-car market. They are tracking down vehicles on the Internet, some made earlier by the Detroit automakers. Some dealers here are hauling used CNG vehicles to Utah by the truckload.

"The demand in Utah is huge," Kolodziej said. "It's sucking all the used vehicles from around the country."

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

NGV Industry in a World of Rising Oil Prices

NGV Industry in a World of Rising Oil Prices
Source - Dr Garth Harris, Secretary-General IANGV
Thursday, 13 March 2008
It would appear that the price of oil is going to be $100 per barrel
or more for the foreseeable future. As it's recent meeting, OPEC
decided that while it is not going to cut production, it will not
increase it. It would also appear that there is likely to be a
downturn in the economies all the developed countries which will
naturally lead to reduced demand for oil. However the demand for oil
is increasing in Asia which at least to some extent will counteract
the reduced demand for oil in other parts of the world. In addition
there is some doubt of the ability of OPEC to increase production.

The other part of the equation is the amount of oil which is
available. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2007
www.bp.com gives world oil reserves as 1371 trillion tonnes. This is
the amount of oil in known fields which it is estimated can be
recovered under existing economic and production conditions. The
reserves to production ratio is 41 years. Back in 1980, reserves
were 667 trillion tonnes and have risen fairly steadily since then.

Natural gas on the other hand has known reserves of 1629 trillion
tons of oil equivalent, that is slightly more than oil reserves.
However the reserves to production ratio is significantly higher at
63 years. Natural gas reserves have more than doubled since 1980.

Another issue of rising importance is the increase in price of
commodities, particularly food. This has been brought about by the
drive to convert food crops into energy products such as ethanol and
at least in part promoted by subsidies.

In many countries where there are natural gas reserves, natural gas
supply is likely to be little impediment to the establishment of a
NGV industry. The amount of natural gas which is likely to be used
over say the first 5 years would be very small compared with other
uses of natural gas.

Secondly, the vehicles that would be using natural gas will vary from
country to country. Most large NGV countries have fleets dominated
by light duty vehicles. However heavy duty vehicles are likely to be
of interest in some countries. For instance, heavy duty trucks and
city buses are popular in NGV fleets in countries such as US, UK.
The Port of Long Beach, California is requiring all vehicles
operating in the port to operate on clean fuels by 2012. Heavy
vehicles use large quantities of gas and vehicle manufacturers can
supply new, reliable vehicles. Readers of NGV Global will have seen
articles concerning availability and fleet conversion.

I recently visited Iran to find that with all its oil resources it
has a program to convert all its vehicles, light duty and heavy duty,
to natural gas. Very shortly, only NGVs will be manufactured in
Iran .

Thirdly, natural gas and biomethane are the same fuel. One is
fossil, the other is renewable. Thus establishment of a CNG industry
based on natural gas can lead directly to use of biomethane in
transport without the difficult fuel related problems that face some
other biofuels. This can be regarded as part of the pathway to
hydrogen which is a gaseous fuel using much of the same technology as
CNG both for refueling and in vehicles.

Biomethane is of much interest worldwide at present. The most
popular sources are municipal waste treatment including sewage and
landfills. Sweden is a prominent country with several municipal bus
fleets.

Given the problems with some "renewable" transport fuels such as
ethanol, biomethane probably has a higher prospect for success than
other biofuels. While most biomethane at present is derived from
waste, it could be made at a large scale using feedstock which is not
competing with food production as in the case of ethanol and using
technologies which are largely already developed. It can be
distributed using the existing natural gas pipe network.

In conclusion, the existing NGV industry should regard the high price
of oil as an opportunity to grow. In some countries the pump price
of CNG is likely to be lower than gasoline or diesel. Natural gas is
widely available in many countries. Different types of vehicles may
be more attractive in some countries than others because of the local
conditions. Natural gas can logically lead to renewable biomethane
and even to hydrogen.

Titan's Surface Organics Surpass Oil Reserves on Earth

This item may mean that at some future date, we will be importing our oil from Titan. How we get it from Saturn, to Low Earth Orbit, to the ground I leave to the more enlightened reader. It also says that there are significant reserves of Natural Gas (methane) on Titan as well. At Titan's distance from the sun, Natural gas is a liquid. This would make any exploitation fairly easy. Just pump the liquid methane out of the sea.

The CNG cars of today may represent a future where we would have our vehicles powered by methane. Again, the technology to get the resources from Titan to Earth would have to be worked out.

However, the prospect of organic compounds on Titan means that at the very least the possibility of life existing on Titan. This would render attempts to exploit any resources moot if we intend to exploit those resources without regard to those possible life forms. A sufficiently unscrupulous future government might have no such qualms.

Titan's Surface Organics Surpass Oil Reserves on Earth

02.13.08

An artist's imagination of hydrocarbon pools, icy and rocky terrain on the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan. Image credit: Steven Hobbs (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia).
› Larger image

Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.

The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., are reported in the Jan. 29 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material -- it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."

At a balmy minus 179 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), Titan is a far cry from Earth. Instead of water, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon's surface, and tholins probably make up its dunes. The term "tholins"was coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of prebiotic chemistry.

Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.

Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 billion tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.

This movie, comprised of several detailed images taken by Cassini's radar instrument, shows bodies of liquid near Titan's north pole.
› Video and full caption

"This global estimate is based mostly on views of the lakes in the northern polar regions. We have assumed the south might be similar, but we really don't yet know how much liquid is there," said Lorenz. Cassini's radar has observed the south polar region only once, and only two small lakes were visible. Future observations of that area are planned during Cassini's proposed extended mission.

Scientists estimated Titan's lake depth by making some general assumptions based on lakes on Earth. They took the average area and depth of lakes on Earth, taking into account the nearby surroundings, like mountains. On Earth, the lake depth is often 10 times less than the height of nearby terrain.

"We also know that some lakes are more than 10 meters or so deep because they appear literally pitch-black to the radar. If they were shallow we'd see the bottom, and we don't," said Lorenz.

The question of how much liquid is on the surface is an important one because methane is a strong greenhouse gas on Titan as well as on Earth, but there is much more of it on Titan. If all the observed liquid on Titan is methane, it would only last a few million years, because as methane escapes into Titan's atmosphere, it breaks down and escapes into space. If the methane were to run out, Titan could become much colder. Scientists believe that methane might be supplied to the atmosphere by venting from the interior in cryovolcanic eruptions. If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan's past.

"We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards life that chemistry can go in an environment like Titan will be important in understanding the origins of life throughout the universe," added Lorenz.

Cassini's next radar flyby of Titan is on Feb. 22, when the radar instrument will observe the Huygens probe landing site.

For images and more information visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov

Methane Blast

I thought everyone visiting would be interested in this story from Science@NASA: NASA-supported scientists and engineers have successfully tested a methane-powered rocket engine. The firing was not only remarkably beautiful (a must-see movie is featured in today's story) but also may herald a new type of spacecraft that one day roams the outer solar system gathering fuel from planets and moons that it visits. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/04may_methaneblast.htm

At one time a LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) vehicle held the land speed record. The Blue Flame is now in Germany at the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum. Blue Flame used Hydrogen Peroxide as an oxidizer.

http://www.museum-sinsheim.de/000042FCA5AB_D4E3D357_00006F8A_0001.html