Natural Gas

In the not-to-distant future, you might find yourself driving into your neighborhood filling station and topping the tanks off with natural gas — yes, natural gas. Efforts have started to make this scenario into reality — as quickly as possible.

Seal Beach, Calif.-based Clean Energy Fuels Group has joined a coalition to help fund and launch a natural gas-powered vehicle made in the U.S. for the nation’s taxi and paratransit fleets. Clean Energy Fuels has put up $10 million in a $160-million equity financing led by Perseus LLC, a merchant bank and private equity fund management company.

Clean Energy Fuels’ efforts don’t seem so strange when you realize that the co-founder is Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens. In a separate move, Pickens added another $10 million to the pot.

The money will be use by The Vehicle Protection Group LLC, the company that will make the multi-purpose vehicle.

“We are making this strategic investment to help bring new, efficient, clean natural gas vehicles to the market in the United States,” says Clean Energy Fuels chief executive Andrew Littlefair. “Demand for natural gas vehicles is surging, particularly with the high cost of petroleum fuel and the savings to be gained by using natural gas fuel.”

Pickens has been a larger-than-life support of alternative energy to cut the nation’s dependence on foreign fuels. He envisions a chain of wind farms stretching from the U.S.-Canadian border to the Texas Panhandle. These wind farms will be used to generate electricity–freeing up natural gas that can, instead, be used as a transportation fuel.

The first vehicles, which will be able to seat four passengers with additional space for a wheelchair or scooter, are expected to begin making their appearance by 2010.

Stay tuned. More to come. Pickens is a man on a mission who believes in his cause and has shown his almost tireless ability to support the cause of energy independence for the U.S.
–John A. Sullivan, News Editor, Oil and Gas Investor, www.OilandGasInvestor.com, jsullivan@hartenergy.com

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