Maker of Natural Gas Fueling Systems Tanks

[Robbien]

Source: NYT

Natural gas is cheap and plentiful, and last summer the future for vehicles fueled by compressed natural gas — or CNG — looked bright. But then crude oil and gasoline prices tanked. Now, the future of CNG cars looks a lot less certain.

It hardly got any attention, but late last week FuelMaker, the Honda-owned maker of natural gas fueling systems — including a residential model called the “Phill” — filed for bankruptcy.

Clean Energy Fuels, a natural gas distributor owned by T. Boone Pickens, had been trying to buy the company from Honda for $17 million, but the two sides could never make a deal. The Phill, which has been on the market about six years, never caught on. Perhaps that is because it takes four hours to fill an empty tank with the device, and it costs up to $6,000.

Read more: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/maker-of-natural-gas-fueling-systems-tanks/

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Boone Pickens is still actively going around the US drumming up support for CNG cars ignoring the fact that it is now an impossible alternative without the ability to refuel from home supplies.

[DJ13]

1. Natural gas is cheap and plentiful

I wish someone would tell that to my gas company.

Were paying prices now that are HIGHER than early last year when the price on the NYMEX was at an all time high.

[Delphinus]

2. Yep.

And, from what I've listened to on the 'net (Professor Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado Boulder), we, the USA, have no more natural gas - it's imported from elsewhere (Canada, I think).

[hay rick]

8. Nope.

Check out the Barnett shale and Marcellus shale activity. Whole lot of new domestic production has been coming on line. Rigs are being idled by falling prices for the time being but the gas is there.

[Delphinus]

10. Ooh, I did not know that.

Thanks!

[hunter]

13. The U.S. consumed 23,236,723 Million Cubic Feet in 2008

The Barnett and Marcellus shales (with optimism approaching absurdity) might extend current U.S. consumption for a year or two.

Those are not the sort of numbers that give me any hope.

We're headed full throttle into the abyss.

Somebody is sure to publish this lovely chart, so I'll save them the trouble:



http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngr11nus_1a.htm

I see some Bush Administration hocus-pocus arm waving in those curves...

We're going to come to a place where we are asking the energy companies, "Why, if we have all these reserves, are we not producing them?" and someone will be doing a big song and dance about this or that or the other thing as the U.S. economy keeps melting away and "demand" keeps falling.

[hay rick]

14. Peak oil yes, peak natural gas no.

Looking at the table accompanying the chart (following above link), I see that "proved reserves" have increased every year since 1998- starting at 164,000 billion cubic feet in 1998 and resting at 237,000 billion cubic feet at the end of 2007.

In the past year or so, natural gas prices have plunged from $13 MMBtu to < $4. In response, the rig count has dropped by approximately half.

I agree we are headed for the abyss, but I don't see a lack of natural gas reserves or production as much of a factor in pushing us to that destination.

[hunter]

15. I disagree.

I suspect the rising reserves are very similar to the half million dollar "equity" my wife and I once had in our house, or the high returns we were getting with our retirement investments. Those numbers were an illusion created by the Bush Administration. In reality the equity in our house was less than $100,000 and our retirement investments lost money.

The same thing is happening with gas that is happening with oil. The cost of extracting difficult oil and gas reserves is too high to support the economy we are accustomed to. Our economy grew and was fueled by easy to extract oil and gas. When that's gone the economy shrinks and becomes a different kind of economy. It's quite possible that many of these difficult to extract oil and gas "reserves" will never be touched, either because the economy collapses to such a sorry state that extracting these difficult reserves becomes impossible, or because the economy is restructured in such a way that the extraction of these reserves is unnecessary.

I'm hoping we can build a strong and just economy that will never need to tap these reserves. If we do decide to tap these reserves in a last ditch effort to fuel the existing economy, then our collision with the wall of economic unsustainability will be much deadlier.

[damntexdem]

3. Tanks for the heads up.

Now, we need more-draconian laws to force the development of alternative energy.

[NOW tense]

4. We have been so busy saving our past

we forgot about our future.

[CreekDog]

5. That headline is punny

:rofl:

[spag68]

6. T Boone

Sorry to correct you, but Pickens is not trying to drum up support for CNG in cars. He has advocated CNG for long haul trucks and has been steady in his support for electric cars. You may not like the man, but his ideas are sound and if you want to criticize him, OK, but get the facts straight.

[swilton]

7. Natural gas is the back up for oil

When oil runs out natural gas will be its replacement (unless of course we have advanced dramatically into solar and wind technology). It's all over the Caspian Sea which is why (besides the oil) that Iran would be such a prize.

[Ilovevermont]

9. natural gas

Unfortunately, natural gas is plentiful in this country. In Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah our public lands have been drilled using a method which Halliburton developed, hydraulic fracturing. In Texas this drilling is taking place right in the city of Fort Worth. Now, the drilling is moving northward to the Marcellus shale, a huge reservoir of natural gas already being tapped in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Central New York is next, with NYC worried about the upstate aquifer which supplies their water. Evidence is already coming in to show how unnatural and destructive this gas drilling is. Among other problems, Cheney's energy bill of 2005 exempts the gas industry from the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Water Act. Halliburton's proprietary interest also releases the industry from having to reveal which of a long list of toxic chemicals that they have used in the west are being used to fracture the rock. For rural people who have leased, this is a dream of great wealth. For those who do not lease, those in nearby towns and cities, those who rent, and those who value pure water above aquifers that could be destroyed for generations there is the realization that we may become a national sacrifice area. While there is wind, solar, thermal - true alternative and renewable energy - there is no need to destroy our land, water, wildlife, agriculture to supply our needs. And conservation is not a bad word either.

[TXRAT2]

11. toxic chemicals?

"Halliburton's proprietary interest also releases the industry from having to reveal which of a long list of toxic chemicals that they have used in the west are being used to fracture the rock."

What toxic chemicals do you suspect they're using?

[hay rick]

12. Welcome to DU. nt