America’s Emerging Economic Expansion will be fueled by Natural Gas

American ingenuity and enterprise will again place us at the forefront, and it will be very soon.

Our economy is on the upswing, and this is going to be a significant part of that big boom.

I predict it will be of longer duration, and of significantly greater strength than our economically prosperous period under the Clinton administration.

And THAT is a good thing.

—

States Ask Detroit: ‘Build Us A Natural Gas Car, Please’

by Tracy Samilton

Listen to the Story; Morning Edition [3 min 28 sec] Download

August 3, 2012
More than 20 state governors are taking an unusual step to boost the natural gas vehicle industry. Independent of the federal government, they’re asking Detroit carmakers to build them a new kind of car: a midsize sedan that runs on compressed natural gas instead of gasoline.

Honda’s CNG Civic is the only natural gas-fueled sedan currently available in the United States. With so few CNG passenger cars on the road, pumping stations are few and far between. Tracy Samilton for NPR

The governors are hoping to boost demand for natural gas cars with their collective buying power. Combined, the states say they could ultimately buy thousands of CNG vehicles to replace their current vehicle fleets — if those cars were available.

Only a few kinds of vehicles currently run on compressed natural gas in the U.S., and only one, the CNG Honda Civic, is a passenger car. Detroit currently offers no natural gas-fueled passenger cars.

Filling up a natural gas car’s fuel tank is a cinch

What will America use to fuel her vehicles when gas is $8/gallon? Natural gas – and we may do it much sooner!

Natural gas.

In fact, it’s being done now.

It way, way, way, way, way, way cheaper than petroleum, and burns clean too!

If you want to see the future, look at Interstate Commerce.

And, here’s another good side to natural gas as a fuel – because it burns cleaner, the engines last exceedingly longer! So now, your 100,000+ mile vehicle becomes a 200,000+ mile vehicle!

—

Shale Gas Set to Reshape Trucking

By REBECCA SMITH

Updated May 23, 2012, 4:23 p.m. ET

Rising diesel costs, last year, forced Waste Management Inc. WM +0.91% to charge customers an extra $169 million, just to keep its garbage trucks fueled. This year, the nation’s biggest trash hauler has a new defensive strategy: it is buying trucks that will run on cheaper natural gas.

In fact, the company says 80% of the trucks it purchases during the next five years will be fueled by natural gas. Though the vehicles cost about $30,000 more than conventional diesel models, each will save $27,000-a-year or more in fuel, says Eric Woods, head of fleet logistics for Waste Management. By 2017, the company expects to burn more natural gas than diesel.

Darrold Withrow, 41, is a certified fueler and mechanic at Waste Management, and he fills up a truck with liquefied natural gas in Oakland, California. / Photograph by Alison Yin for The Wall Street Journal

“The economics favoring natural gas are overwhelming,” says Scott Perry, vice president of procurement at Ryder Systems Inc., R +2.31% one of the nation’s largest truck-leasing companies and a transporter of goods for the grocery, automotive, electronics and retail industries.

The shale gas revolution, which cut the price of natural gas to about $2.70 a million British Thermal Units in the past year, already has shaken up the utility industry, which is switching to natural gas from coal in a big way. Vast Amounts of natural gas in shale rock formations have been unlocked by improved drilling techniques, making the fuel cheap and plentiful across the U.S.

Now the shale-gas boom is rippling through transportation. Never before has