Officials Promote Alternative Fuel

Benton County Judge Bob Clinard, left, talks Thursday with Kelly Volin on at the seminar on natural gas use. Volin is with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.
Benton County Judge Bob Clinard, left, talks Thursday with Kelly Volin on at the seminar on natural gas use. Volin is with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

— “Amazingly informative” is how Kurt Moore characterized a presentation on the merits of using compressed natural gas as an alternative fuel.

Moore, a Benton County Justice of the Peace, was one of about 50 people who attended the CNG Roundtable held Thursday at NorthWest Arkansas Community College.

“I’m very interested with the possibility of using CNG in the County Road Department equipment,” Moore said.

Benton County Judge Bob Clinard hosted the five-hour session with speakers from other government entities in Arkansas and private businesses interested in promoting the use of compressed natural gas as an alternative to traditional gasoline and diesel fuels. Clinard has advocated switching to compressed natural gas since he took office in 2010, stressing the economic benefits from the use of compressed natural gas as a fuel with much lower “gasoline-gallon equivalent” prices. Compressed natural gas fuel costs vary but are typically half the per-gallon price of gasoline. Clinard also touted the benefits to the county of ending reliance on foreign oil in favor of a domestic energy source.

“More than 70 percent of the natural gas in the world is in North America,” Clinard said. “If we’re going to reduce our national debt, this is a huge way to do it. Not only that, it will create jobs in this country and reduce the amount of money sent overseas.”

At A Glance

Pit Stop

There are three compressed natural gas fueling stations in Arkansas open to the public: one in Fort Smith, one in North Little Rock and one in Damascus, according to Kelly Volin, transportation program manager for the Arkansas Energy Office. The state has provided $470,000 in grant money to help build two additional stations, one in Little Rock and one in Conway, Volin said.

Source: Staff Report

The session featured speakers from all sectors of the compressed natural gas industry, from suppliers to equipment vendors to consumers.

Rich Davis, representing SourceGas Arkansas, said 90 percent of the company’s natural gas is produced through the “fracking” process used to release natural gas from shale rock formations, and Arkansas is a producing state. Davis said locally the company is getting a growing number of requests from businesses wanting to convert poultry houses from propane to compressed natural gas. He said the company already has made plans to loop a high-pressure transmission line around the Hiwasse area, and that line would be a prime source for businesses wanting to open CNG fueling stations in the area. He said SourceGas is in the process of converting its own vehicle fleet to use compressed natural gas.

“It’s here, and it’s available,” Davis said.

During his remarks, Davis mentioned the availability of home-fueling stations for compressed natural gas vehicles. Moore suggested SourceGas consider making the equipment available to customers on a lease basis with the payments being added to their monthly bills.

“We’ll look into it,” Davis said.

Nathan Hamilton, director of special projects for North Little Rock, said the city had side-stepped the “chicken-and-the egg” question of debating whether fueling stations need to be built first or if a certain number of CNG vehicles has to be in use to justify building fueling stations.

“The mayor wanted to kick-start the industry,” Hamilton said, so North Little Rock built and has been operating a public CNG station since August 2011. The city is making use of the station, Hamilton said, but public use has been growing steadily.

“We had 37 transactions the first 30 days we were open,” he said. “We had a $1,000 gas bill for that month. In the last three months, we’ve averaged over 50 transaction per day, and our gas bill has averaged $15,000 to $16,000 a month.”

Hamilton said the initial idea had been to provide a service for Central Arkansas residents and businesses. After the station opened, he said, the city has had a number of customers passing through Arkansas on longer journeys.

“If you’re open, they will find you,” Hamilton said.

While Clinard has been a vocal supporter of using compressed natural gas as a fuel, the county has yet to take the first step to converting its vehicle fleet. Scott Stober, the county’s public services director who oversees the Road Department, said it’s a daunting task.

“We’ve got 18 dump trucks, 21 graders and about 30 pickup trucks,” Stober said. “It makes sense, but it’s going to take the Quorum Court finding the money to do it. I looked at the state bid prices, and it’s about $6,800 additional for a CNG pickup. It’s hard to ask for that much extra when we don’t have a fueling station here. Our fleet is big enough to do a slow-fill station for the trucks, but we’d have to have a fueling vehicle for our graders when they’re out in the field.”

Dan Douglas, justice of the peace, said he took away a lot of information from the roundtable but still has questions.

“The one thing that really jumped out at me was that we are so far behind the rest of the world in using CNG,” he said. “Pakistan has over 1.9 million CNG vehicles, and we’re sitting at 116,000.

“As far as the county goes, we’ve just got to get some information about the number of vehicles we have, how much fuel we use, the cost of a fueling station and go from there. With the cost of converting, we’d probably have to make a commitment to build a fueling station and then, as we purchase new vehicles, grow into it.”

Douglas stopped short of endorsing a county-built and operated CNG fueling station, but said if one is proposed, it would have to be available to the public as well.

“I wouldn’t think we’d consider anything else,” he said.

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