NG Trains

[G8trGr8t]

One small step in the right direction

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...fett-cost.html

General Electric Co. (GE) and Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), the world’s largest locomotive makers, are rushing to develop natural gas-powered models in a potential shift from diesel’s six decades as the fuel of choice for railroads.

Three of the biggest U.S. rail carriers -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A)’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC, Union Pacific Corp. (UNP) and Norfolk Southern (NSC) Corp. -- are working with manufacturers on using gas as an alternative power source for freight trains. CSX Corp. is studying the technology.

Tapping the nation’s glut of gas as a transportation power source opens a new front in the global competition between GE and Caterpillar. Liquefied natural gas holds the promise of cutting railroads’ costs, curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and ushering in the industry’s biggest change in fuel technology since diesel displaced steam in the 1950s.

“We are entering a new era where natural gas will be a major fuel,” Lorenzo Simonelli, chief executive officer of GE’s transportation unit, said in an interview. “If you believe the price advantage over diesel is going to stay here for the next 10 to 15 years, then LNG is a revolutionary fuel.”

That’s significantly costlier than liquefied natural gas. It costs truckers $2.99 to buy LNG with the same energy content as a gallon of diesel at Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE)’s Port of Long Beach facility, the world’s largest LNG fueling station, said Gary Foster, the company’s spokesman. That’s before volume discounts that can reduce the price by as much as 30 percent, he said, meaning some customers pay as little as $2.10.

Railroads are turning to locomotive makers, including Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE and Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, for engines that can help them take advantage of those savings.

Amazing that $2.10 worth of LNG can provide the same power of $4 worth of diesel. Think what that would do to the economy if you could cut the cost of fuel required to transport goods in half while greatly reducing the volume of imported oil and keeping all that money here circulating in our economy.

[Gatorrick22]

Originally Posted by G8trGr8t

One small step in the right direction

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...fett-cost.html





Amazing that $2.10 worth of LNG can provide the same power of $4 worth of diesel. Think what that would do to the economy if you could cut the cost of fuel required to transport goods in half while greatly reducing the volume of imported oil and keeping all that money here circulating in our economy.

You always bring us the coolest stories. Repped..... if I could. Next time my friend.

[supagator]

Repped you both!

[g8trjax]

Is this lack of urgency by our govt nefarious, or incompetence? I just don't get it.

[G8trGr8t]

0 wants higher energy prices for anything carbon based so that alternate forms can be cost competetive. It doesn't matter to him what that does to the economy or the people that elected him.

0 is convinced that solar is the saviour and we just need to make other forms more expensive so that we are forced to use his preferred alternative. There is no other common sense answer as to why we do not have a plan in action to utilize the abundance of natural gas availabe to us at such discounted prices ($3.5) versus what the rest of the world is paying ($12 - $16).

Big ag, big pharma, and big electric and chemical companies do not want nat gas to be used as surface transport fuel as they want to keep price as low as possible be supressing demand. Each of those industries use ng as feedstock so any increase in price cuts into their profit margins. The republicans are also complicit in getting in the way as both the pubs and the dems provided bipartisan cover to shoot down the pickens plan that would have accelerated the conversion from diesel to nat gas.

What they fail to recognize or acknowledge though is that at $4 nat gas prices, the industry would be able to provde more than we could consume. At $5, there would be such a drilling boom that unemployment would drop to nothing in several parts of the country and the drilling and processing industry associated with natural gas would be investing hundreds of billions per year in developemnt.

Right now, there are a lot of natural gas wells just shut in to limit oversupply and the great majority of drilling for nat gas is occurring where companies have to drill to keep leases current or lose them. There are millions of cubic feet of nat gas flared away (burned at the wellhead) everyday because the low price does not cover the cost to build the pipelines and the processing facilities needed to collect and sell the gas.

That is the next regulatory shot to be fired against the oil and gas industry by this administration. They are preparing to issue new rules preventing the flaring of nat gas from oil wells in the name of preventing global warming / climate change. This will require oilers to build the pipelines and processing facilities at a loss which will then have to be recovered by charging a higher price for oil or decreasing the amount of drilling for oil they can do.

All the money wasted on solyndras, volts, teslas, cash for clunkers, etc could have us well on our way to converting big rigs and fleets to nat gas which would have been an investment that would have produced a return instead of just wasted debt piled on future generations.