Plan to Sell Natural Gas at Unocal Service Stations
Compressed natural gas--something of a sleeper in the ranks of alternative fuels for vehicles--will get a test drive in the Los Angeles area.
Unocal Corp. and Southern California Gas Co. announced Thursday that they will sell the fuel--called CNG--to the public from two Unocal service stations. The sites will be announced by the end of the year.
Natural gas has long been studied by energy companies and environmental groups--and promoted by the U.S. natural gas industry--as a particularly clean-burning alternative fuel. Yet so far, more public attention has been paid to another fuel alternative, methanol. As a liquid, it can be compactly tanked in private vehicles.
Though it is a gas, supporters say CNG is equally portable because it is compressed. Now, they say, the problem is the dilemma of creating a market when neither natural-gas-powered vehicles nor the facilities to dispense the fuel are yet available.
“We have to break through the lethargy that we have in the nation,” said Richard J. Stegemeier, president and CEO of Unocal. “We have to provide both the vehicle and the fuel, and that’s what we’re trying to start today.”
On the CNG-powered vehicle front, General Motors Corp. and a gas-industry group announced a $39-million project Monday to begin building light- and medium-duty Sierra pickup trucks in the 1993 or 1994 model year that will be powered by natural gas.
Stegemeier and Richard D. Farman, chief executive of the gas company, said they expect CNG to be used in Southern California over the next few years mostly in vehicle fleets, which return daily to central servicing facilities. They estimate that if half the 800,000 fleet vehicles in Southern California switched to natural gas, it would cut oil imports to the area by 20%.
Natural gas is already in use in Southern California on a tiny scale. The 44 trucks operated by Pasadena-based Dy-Dee Diaper Service have run on CNG for more than a decade. And Braun Linen Service in Paramount has relied for the past 15 years on its 20 natural-gas fueled trucks.
