Natural Gas at the Pumps….Someday, Maybe, but Probably Not
There’s something definitely fishy here, and it reeks of oil companies.
The North American continent holds the planet’s largest reserves of natural gas–landfills create so much of it, too, that they blow off plumes of yellow/blue flame during the nights so as to get rid of it. There’s simply too much of it, and it’s been this way ever since the mighty Ozark Mountains hurled skyward amidst streaks and thunderclaps, two-or-so billion years ago.
These deposits are usually found in the same, or shallower even, depths in the Earth than is the other fossil fuel, petroleum deriviatives. Refining crude takes billions of dollars and makes billions in expenses for motorists, creating billions of profits for American, British, and Chinese oil companies, with the Russians coming along fast.
By constrast, processing natural gas costs almost nothing at all, save for initial extraction piping costs, adding to an already-established above-ground storage infrastructure, and completely developed road/rail transport to (natural) gas stations near you.
Herein lies the problem. Most major U.S. population centers have not just few, but NO natual gas stations available for use. St Louis, a major metropolitan area of just shy of three million, has exactly one (1) terminal for motor vehicle fueling. It’s not very handy for big parts of the area, either–by that, I mean it’s not centrally located for everybody to get to it.
SIDETRACK: There are two makes of cars, both Japanese, who offer a natural-gas combustion package. As a former GM employee, I can tell you that Detroit’s still busy arguing about who’s to blame for taking so damn long to get US-built hybrids rolling out in real numbers. Retrofitting natural gas assembly centers (or outsourced vendors to deliver natural gas combustion systems to existing plants) isn’t even on the drawing board at any American car company. The leaders of the companies have to first simmer down the squabbling of one issue before taking on a new round of blame-assignment and butt-covering. The total cost of a compact vehicle with natural gas is equivalent, plus about a thousand, to a standard engine. Hopefully the next presidential administration will work with Congress to ensure Americans who are paying entirely too much for automobiles get some sort of a tax credit, and natural gas/hybrid buyers even moreso.
A bigger problem is this: when a vehicle DOES gets a natural gas fillup, the driver can drive exactly HALF of his tank capacity to whereever he’s going, then drive THE OTHER HALF of his tank’s capacity back to the one (1) fuel terminal he started from. If he could make it as far from here as Kansas City, 250 miles away (which he couldn’t, since natural gas mileage isn’t as good as hybird-powered, but is admittedly better than that of gasoline powered engines), he’d be out of luck because THAT metropolitan area of just shy of three million people doesn’t boast a SINGLE natural gas fueling terminal for automobiles.
Friends, I know what the defenders of measly natural gas support here are thinking–natural gas is fine around town, just not for long trips. I got news for you: ‘local only’ driving patterns will never work in America; I cringe at the idea of your wife stranded out there on the Interstate because she forgot to mention to you that you had to drive 50+ miles to fill natural gas in her tank (at the terminal which, by the way, closes for business in the early evening).
Toward Chicago, three hundred miles away, things aren’t any better. I cringe at being stuck in the middle of the middle of Illinois with an idling engine and solar calculator trying to find the trip’s ‘turn around and go back to St Louis’ point. It’s as absurd as this picture, if not more so, all over the country, save for our California friends whose admittedly over-environmentally-zealous state legislature mandated natural gas be available for motorist there to have when they need it. One can drive from Seattle to Long Beach and back on natural gas; there’s dozens of terminals that are simply built-in to ordinary gas stations/convenience marts.
California was thinking green, but I’m thinking that if I ever see a gasoline company executive driving around, counting his change, and strumming to the radio…
…I would perform an on-the-spot fuel system conversion of the big daddy car he’s driving. He’ll walk many-a-long mile before he ever finds where to fill up his tank.