RWB

Is There a Future for NG Powered Vehicles?

You mention gas being cheaper in Texas and Louisiana due to the supply originating from those areas. But this will be less and less true as the enormous Marcellus Shale is developed--it covers much of Pennsylvania and bits of other states, including New York.

Also, the infrastructure of public CNG filling stations might be less of a hurdle than you think, as it is possible that appliances sold for home use could allow for home fueling from the natural gas line that already comes to your house (for many Americans).

However, let's also consider this. Right now, we produce about as much natural gas as we consume. We import some. But if a significant portion of our automotive fleet were converted to CNG, our consumption of natural gas would explode. Pickens plan deals with this by taking all those natural gas power plants off-line and replacing them with wind farms. We'd have to do something drastic like that to prevent the cost of natuiral gas from sky-rocketing (more than it already has, that is). Full disclosure--I work for a natural gas E&P company, so skyrocketing natural gas prices would be pretty super for me personally. But for the country, not so super. I bring it up because any large-scale change as advocated here and by Pickens is likely to have some big unintended economic consequences, some good and some bad.