, March 27, 2011 1:51 PM
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(Source: The Evening Sun, Hanover, Pa.)By Craig K. Paskoski, The Evening Sun, Hanover, Pa.
March 27--Dan Moul spent three days in Los Angeles last month, touring and learning about a plant there that manufactures and installs refueling stations for compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas.

The state representative saw firsthand how the company, Clean Energy, is building the infrastructure needed to make natural gas a common transportation fuel.

The trip, which included a full day of seminars with company officials, confirmed for Moul that not only Pennsylvania's future, but the country's future, will be tied to natural gas.

"Now is the time to replace foreign oil with natural gas and I see Pennsylvania leading the way," Moul said. "We must become energy self-sufficient, it's not a should we. It's definitely the way to go."

As part of his effort to learn all he can about the natural gas industry, Moul made the trip to California at his own expense.

"It's one thing to talk about something. It's another thing to see it hands-on," he said. "I took a look at how that refueling system works. That's the big issue here. We have the gas, but how do we get it from the ground to the vehicles."

A vocal critic of America's reliance on foreign oil, Moul has embraced the recent boom in Marcellus Shale drilling that has seen tens of thousands of natural gas wells pop up in the northern and western parts of the commonwealth. The surge in drilling has been spawned by a fairly new technique called hydraulic fracturing, known as "fracking," that has allowed drills to tap areas that were previously cost-prohibitive.

"It's unbelievable what that has opened up for us," he said. "This country is loaded with natural gas. We have hundreds of years of natural gas."

With the state pumping an increasing amount of natural gas, Moul said, the next step is setting up the infrastructure to make it the fuel of choice for America's drivers.

"The big problem is not getting the (natural gas) vehicles. The problem is people have no place to fuel them," Moul said. "If I had a fueling station within a couple miles of my house I would definitely buy a natural gas vehicle."

To encourage that transition, Moul is sponsoring a bill that would offer incentives for small mass transit and transportation companies to switch their fleets to natural gas fuel.

Moul's bill will be part of a legislative package that will be introduced early next month designed to spur the natural gas infrastructure in the state.

"If we can start converting our fleet vehicles and get them away from diesel, not only is it better for the environment, it helps us be self-sufficient.


Buck