CNG REVISITED

The campaign to convert the American motorist to compressed natural gas from gasoline continues apace with more full page ads touting the cost advantage of natural gas. T. Boone Pickens, the apparent power behind this campaign, has been in the energy field for a long time. As an independent oil man he founded Mesa Petroleum and led the firm for many years until the industry hit a bad stretch and Pickens was ousted.

Pickens recently published a new autobiography, reviewed by a columnist in the Wall Street Journal who apparently is no great admirer. Among the allegations was that Pickens is behind a group formed to develop compressed natural gas delivery stations which, according to the reviewer, fuels Pickens' interest in CNG as an automobile fuel. The reviewer went on to attack Pickens' positions on wind power and the economic advantages of CNG. He asserted that wind power won't be very useful because the wind farms are in the western desert and the major electrical markets are in the eastern US, requiring the construction of new and expensive transmission lines. As to CNG, he wrote that a car built to use this fuel would carry a surcharge of $6,000 and that to convert a vehicle to CNG would cost $12,000. And, finally, there are few places where you can buy the CNG you would need.

At first blush this appears damning, but the more I think about it the more I'm convinced the reviewer is writing from biases and not from facts. Technically I don't think converting an internal combustion engine from gasoline to compressed gas is that difficult. Admittedly compressed gas requires a steel cylinder in place of the sheet iron gas tank and, often in cars that I've ridden that use CNG, the tank does take up much of the trunk. But starting from scratch to build a gas powered car shouldn't need nearly as much modification as building a hybrid, and I don't recall Toyota's Prius requiring a $6,000 premium, although there was a premium. Considering that my Ford Fusion has a trunk with 20 cubic feet of capacity, I would think that a compressed gas tank could be built into the car, replacing the gasoline tank, without too much impingement of the trunk space. As to getting the cylinders to fire, if a motor can be made to use biodiesel it shouldn't be too hard to modify it for natural gas. As to a $12,000 price for conversion, I think that figure is just off the wall. Besides which if you buy a car designed for CNG the question of conversion is moot. True there are few places that sell compressed gas, but should the market grow, Pickens and others will invest to supply it.

The basic facts that natural gas costs substantially less than gasoline and that the US has substantial domestic supplies of natural gas remain.

There has been substantial comment on the disconnect between areas suitable for wind generation of power, like the western desert, and the principal market for electric power which remains the eastern urban centers. Transmission lines at present are inadequate and building new ones not only costs a lot of money but runs into stiff opposition from environmentalists. We all want "green" power but don't want to see a transmission line within 50 miles. The latest developments I have read about finesse the problem by proposing to put the wind mills off the coast of the Eastern US. Unlike the Pacific, the Atlantic ocean remains realatively shallow for some distance from shore so that wind towers even as far as 50 miles from the coast are technically feasible. Wind farms off the coast of New Jersey or Delaware would certainly bridge the gap between power generation and consumption.

Regardless of technical difficulties the time has come, politically speaking, to throw lots of money at alternative energy options. Let's just hope for the sake of the tax payer that there is some direct connection between money spent and results generated.