Taxi dri­ver Phillip James swears by com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG). His month­ly gas bill, which used to be over $3,000, has been cut in half since he con­vert­ed to CNG three years ago.

CNG, a gaseous fu­el, is a mix­ture of hy­dro­car­bons main­ly methane in the range of 95 per cent. Due to its low den­si­ty, it’s com­pressed to a pres­sure of 200 bars to en­hance the ve­hi­cle’s on-board stor­age ca­pac­i­ty.

All spark-ig­nit­ed en­gines can be con­vert­ed to CNG, for which a spe­cial­ly de­signed con­ver­sion kit is re­quired for the con­ver­sion process.

James, one of the grow­ing num­ber of mo­torists who wants val­ue for mon­ey at the pumps, said: “Is re­al­ly amaz­ing how this CNG has help me fi­nan­cial­ly. Is a big bur­den lift­ed for me and my fam­i­ly fi­nan­cial­ly and you see how things go­ing with the econ­o­my, so I would en­cour­age any­body to con­vert to CNG to save plen­ty mon­ey.”

From Jan­u­ary 2019, the NGC CNG Com­pa­ny Ltd will be spon­sor­ing con­ver­sion of 1,000 taxis and maxi taxis from gaso­line to CNG. This pro­mo­tion fol­lows a high­ly suc­cess­ful, ful­ly-sub­scribed tranche of con­ver­sions in June and Ju­ly where 500 taxi and 180 maxi-taxi own­ers were of­fered spon­sored con­ver­sions on a first-come, first-served ba­sis. Suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants are cur­rent­ly be­ing con­vert­ed by Gov­ern­ment-ap­proved li­censed con­vert­ers.

The re­cent price in­crease in su­per gaso­line from $3.97 a litre to $4.97 a litre has made CNG an even more at­trac­tive fu­el op­tion for the mo­tor­ing pub­lic with its price of $1 a litre equiv­a­lent.

“Based on the rate change, and pos­i­tive feed­back re­ceived from the trans­porta­tion sec­tor with re­spect to CNG’s per­for­mance and eco­nom­ics, the board of di­rec­tors and man­age­ment of NGC CNG have agreed to spon­sor a sec­ond tranche of con­ver­sions,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment.

“As ob­tained in the first tranche, NGC CNG will cov­er the con­ver­sion costs of suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants, up to $12,000.”

A gaso­line to CNG con­ver­sion takes one to two days and in­volves in­stalling a CNG tank, tub­ing, reg­u­la­tor, in­jec­tors and an elec­tron­ic con­trol unit (ECU) which work har­mo­nious­ly with the ve­hi­cle’s ex­ist­ing fu­el sys­tem.

Ve­hi­cles first need to be as­sessed by a gov­ern­ment-ap­proved li­censed con­vert­er for me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal in­tegri­ty as well as ve­hi­cle com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the CNG kit be­fore qual­i­fy­ing for in­stal­la­tion.

The NGC state­ment con­tin­ued: “CNG con­tin­ues to de­liv­er tremen­dous val­ue to cur­rent con­sumers, most ap­pre­cia­bly in terms of dol­lars saved. Mo­torists should con­sid­er that the av­er­age gaso­line taxi own­er can cur­rent­ly save more than $20,000 an­nu­al­ly by switch­ing to CNG. A maxi taxi own­er who con­verts from diesel can save ap­prox­i­mate­ly $32,000 an­nu­al­ly, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly $64,000 if he or she up­grades to an orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er (OEM) CNG maxi taxi.

“Such sub­stan­tial sav­ings mean that con­ver­sion costs can be quick­ly amor­tised, mak­ing CNG un­de­ni­ably af­ford­able in the long run.”

NGC CNG ex­pects ro­bust de­mand when the 2019 tranche of con­ver­sions is opened for sub­scrip­tion and urges mo­torists to ap­ply ear­ly to ben­e­fit and join the move­ment to­wards clean­er, cheap­er fu­el.

There are 13 sta­tions in T&T that can dis­pense CNG. At present 10 sta­tions open to the pub­lic, two are for pri­vate fleets, one func­tion­al but await­ing tem­po­rary equip­ment, two ear­marked for up­grade and at least four are ex­pect­ed to be opened short­ly.