Education on Natural Gas Versus Gasoline For Vehicles
September 2, 2008
Recently I had a couple of questions about the Pickens’ Plan to move from gasoline to natural gas. I turned to Jane Van Ryan of the American Petroleum Institute for answers. In spite of the fact that her computer was in the shop, she was kind enough to repond by Blackberry from her phone!
FedUpEditor: As this discussion of Pickens’ Plan gets more and more traction the talk of running our cars on natural gas is coming up. Along with this comes many questions that you might be able to answer. First, let me explain that I consider myself pretty intelligent person mostly from self-education (got B’s and C’s in school and only made 1 year of college before I went to technical school for computers – most of my learning has come afterward) and really never considered where natural gas comes from. I would turn on the stove and there it was. I had to light a pilot light or two for our water heaters, but never really considered where the energy was coming from. (I’m sure I’m not alone on this.) But with the discussion of Pickens’ plan to run cars on natural gas, it seems like a good time to learn!
Nancy Pelosi is against drilling, but I’m told that natural gas is found where oil deposits are. And without drilling, there would be no natural gas. Is that right? Has API done any studies on what it would take to implement the Pickens’ Plan of converting cars in the US to run on natural gas? Seems a little silly to me since we already have made major improvements on the way cars use gasoline to burn cleaner. It sounds more to me like T. Boone Pickens has found another way to make millions more dollars on federally subsidized wind farms on top of the billions he already makes on his oil holdings… all at our expense. You may not know about the latter, but surely you can comment on the natural gas issue.
Jane Van Ryan, API: API has not conducted a study about CNG (natural gas) retrofits in the auto fleet. It’s possible that DOE has looked into this topic. You might check the DOE (Department Of Energy) website for information.
I can provide some basic information about CNG as a transportation fuel. CNG has a high octane rating – generally 120 or higher – and is used as the primary fuel source in some light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles. CNG is stored onboard vehicles in cylinders at pressures of 3000 to 5000 pounds per square inch.
On a per-gallon basis, CNG stored in the vehicle tank has about one-third less energy content than gasoline, which limits driving range. DOE says there are approximately 742 CNG refueling stations in the US, versus about 169,000 gasoline service stations. CNG typically is less expensive than gasoline, but CNG vehicles can cost between 1500 and 6000 dollars more. There are about 150,000 light-duty CNG vehicles out of a total of more than 225 million in the US.
You also asked about where natural gas is found. For many years it was discovered primarily with oil, but in certain geologic formations, it exists alone. For example, natural gas can be found in coalbeds and in some shale formations including the Marcellus. Shale, which lies under a portion of NY, PA, and eastern WV. The technology to produce this natural gas is fairly new.
One more point: the Energy Information Administration recently predicted that the number of light-duty CNG vehicles will grow to 800,000 by 2025 with total number of light-duty vehicles in the US growing to more than 300 million. Therefore, many believe that such CNG vehicles are likely to continue playing a niche role in our transportation system.
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