Onedip

Natural Gas Transportation Is a Win-Win Technology

I wholeheartedly agree, just one thing:
There is absolutely no need to mandate cars be built that only run on natural gas! In Brazil, natural gas cars come from the factory (yes, FORDs, GMs too) already tri-fuel, that is, they can run entirely on natural gas, gasoline or ethanol, the last two on any mix the custumer wants to run (40/60, 80/20, etc).
The addition to cost is negligible, and such cars could take advantage of the cheapest or readily available fuel on demand in any part of the US...
Cheers

On Dec 11 09:20 AM Bob Lunn wrote:

> Finally, someone that gets it!!!
>
> The American automotive industry needs to be revitalized. That change
> process needs to be integrated with a national energy policy. That
> integration would NEVER have happened if the American automotive
> industry was in good financial condition. However, with the appointment
> of an Automotive Kaiser, the United States has an opportunity to
> make major changes in an obviously dysfunctional industry. Its dysfunctional
> in many ways, but in this instance, its dysfunctional because it
> builds mostly gasoline powered vehicles which conflicts with what
> should be our countries fundamental goal, ending our dependence on
> foreign oil.
>
> One of MANY possible scenarios… Immediately start building natural
> gas distribution stations all over the US. Now mandate that say X
> % of all new American vehicles only run on natural gas. Now start
> expanding the distribution stations… now increase the natural gas
> made American vehicles… Now pass laws that X % of foreign imports
> must run on natural gas… keep expanding the natural gas distribution
> stations… Keep this up until this country no longer allows new gasoline
> vehicles to be sold in this country. Who owns those natural gas distribution
> stations? In the end, they should be sold in an IPO, but I suspect
> private capital would probably enter the market as soon as the game
> changing aspects of a plan like this were known.

Chávez's New World Order?

I think one should not go too far in proclaiming NOCs generalized incompetence...they did manage to get almost all the oil reserves after all, and some, like Petrobras are actually pretty competent in their fields of expertise...