Drive to convert vehicles to natural gas makes way to Washingtonby M. Scott Carter
The Journal Record November 5, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY – T. Boone Pickens has traveled across the country promoting the idea.

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Aubrey McClendon likes it, too.And the boys at UPS have already done their part.
With the memory of $4-per-gallon gas still vivid and the state home to two of the country’s largest natural gas producers, the drive to convert vehicles from unleaded to compressed natural gas, also known as CNG, is gaining traction – both locally and across the country.
This week that effort got a boost as congressional hearings began on energy and climate change legislation. In Washington, lawmakers studied the issue while natural gas proponents, industry leaders and environmentalists all issued calls for fleets of “greener” vehicles.
The goal, the groups said, was to change the way Americans think about transportation fuel.
“As Congress holds hearings this week on energy and climate change legislation, I am encouraged that policymakers are considering the pivotal role of the transportation sector, which is responsible for 30 percent of U.S. carbon emissions,” said Rod Lowman, president of America’s Natural Gas Alliance. “And natural gas vehicles are an essential part of the solution to reducing emissions.”
Using natural gas to fuel vehicles, Lowman said, would present a great opportunity for Americans.
“Abundant, American natural gas is the cleanest alternative transportation fuel commercially available today,” Lowman said in a media release. “It presents a great opportunity for the U.S. to curb carbon emissions in the transportation sector, while enhancing energy security, a fact supported by testimony this week in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.”
In some markets that conversion has already begun.
In March, AT&T announced it would replace its 8,000 service vans with natural-gas-powered vehicles. The $350 million change, company officials said, was part of AT&T’s half-a-billion alternative-fuel vehicle initiative.
“When the price of gas rises at the pump by a cent and you’re buying about 80 million gallons of fuel a year, it gets pretty expensive,” AT&T’s Jerome Webber, told Business Week magazine.
Other companies have made similar changes.
In Oklahoma City, UPS recently added 100 new CNG vehicles to its fleet. Those vehicles were part of 300 new compressed natural gas vehicles and 200 hybrid vehicles the company purchased last year.
“This is something we’ve always been involved in,” said Sara Everett, a UPS spokesman. “In the 1920s and ’30s, we used electric vehicles in New York.”
Everett said UPS now operates 106 CNG vehicles in Oklahoma City and 19 in Tulsa.
“We look at it as a way to reduce our impact on the environment,” she said.
And while alternative vehicles do save the company money and qualify for federal and state tax credits, those vehicles, she noted, are more expensive.
“We don’t normally discuss what we spend on our vehicles,” Everett said. “But the CNG vehicles are more expensive.”
That expense also includes fueling stations.
While UPS refuels their vehicles on site, nationwide the number of CNG fueling stations is small. In an effort to solve the problem, industry leaders say they are working to expand the number of stations. Currently, only about 1,100 of the nation’s 162,000 stations sell natural gas, said the industry group Natural Gas Vehicles for America.
But those numbers are increasing. Clean Energy, a California-based company backed by Pickens, has installed 184 new natural gas stations across the country and has plans to add up to 80 more in the next two years. And in Oklahoma City, officials with Chesapeake Energy celebrated the opening of a new CNG fueling station near the Western Avenue and 63rd Street intersection – actions the industry hopes have not gone unnoticed.
“We have a whole array of alternative fuel vehicles we’re looking at,” Everett said. “We look at it like a rolling laboratory; we’re trying to see which vehicle works best in which area.”

Buck