Bucks
Walt Cressman Natural Gas Cars
Dear Friends,
Good morning. Last August, when the price of gasoline was hovering around $4 per gallon, I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times about cars running on natural gas. In Utah, drivers with cars equipped to run on natural gas, pay only 87 cents per gallon!
I did some arithmetic before calling my friend Walter Cressman, the President of Cress Gas in Richlandtown. Walter is one of the smartest fellows I know, a genius who not only runs one of Upper Bucks’ largest propane gas companies…note propane gas is different from natural gas…but he’s the Chairman of First Savings Bank as well. I knew he’d have some interesting thoughts.
Here are my calculations, when I was buying gasoline at $3.60 per gallon just three months ago. My gasoline bill approached $700 each month, about 194 gallons per month. If I lived in Utah and had a car equipped to run on natural gas at 87 cents per gallon, I would have paid $169 instead. That’s a monthly saving of $530 or $6,360 per year. In four years, I could pay for a $25,000 car
“By an odd confluence of public policy and private initiative, Utah has become the first state in the country to experience broad consumer interest in the idea of running cars on clean natural gas,” Clifford Krauss wrote in the New York Times (Aug. 30).
“The natural gas car surge in Utah is because of several factors,” the article continued. “Questar Gas, the public utility, has compressed-gas pumps around the state open to the public, a fueling infrastructure that few states can match.
“The situation is a Catch-22,” the
The Honda Civic GX is the only car powered by natural gas made by a major automaker.
That’s exactly the point, Walter Cressman told me as he discussed alternative fuels. Pointing to a map showing America’s population density on the East and West Coasts versus the supply of natural gas in the center, Cressman unleashed plenty of valid criticism.
“We haven’t built a pipeline in years,” he began. “It’s the NIMBY factor,” short for “not in my back yard.” Cressman spoke about T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oil billionaire who’s financing a national campaign promoting wind power and natural gas to replace imported oil. Cressman believes that Pickens is right. “But the problem will be building the [wind corridor] transmission lines,” Cressman said. “Unless the federal government intercedes, there’ll be 25 years of litigation.
He turned to taxation.
“We can’t level the playing field via tax credits because tax credits won’t last,” Cressman continued. “We need to switch to alternative fuels. What is key is changing human behavior. If the price of $4 per gallon changed our behavior [reducing demand], we should regulate the gas tax so the price of gasoline remains at $4. That will change behavior [permanently].”
At the time of this interview, three weeks ago, Cressman noted that the price of gasoline had already fallen to $1.99 in Ohio. “But government taxation strategy is standing in the way,” he said. “The government is the problem.”
Where have we heard that before?
“The infrastructure for natural gas does not exist,” he explained…although it does in Utah. Cressman told me that propane infrastructure is up and running. His trucks run on propane gas.
Natural gas cars produce at least
20 percent less greenhouse gas per mile, the
Cressman believes that the lack of a clear energy policy has cost us dearly. “America’s system of opposing drilling and building nuclear plants defies good common sense and science,” Cressman said. He’s right.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith