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Monday, July 14, 2025

CNG stations converting to cashless system

by

2299 days ago
20190330
Rahul Rampersad, right, of Harkness Energy, explains the workings of the CNG pump to President of NGC CNG Curtis Mohammed, left, and Unipet chairman Dr Afraz Ali.

Rahul Rampersad, right, of Harkness Energy, explains the workings of the CNG pump to President of NGC CNG Curtis Mohammed, left, and Unipet chairman Dr Afraz Ali.

Shastri Boodan

A cash­less pay­ment sys­tem will soon be avail­able for mo­torists to buy CNG. It will in­volve a ve­hi­cle man­age­ment sys­tem where a com­put­er chip will be in­stalled on cars con­vert­ed by a li­censed CNG con­vert­er so that the mo­torist can sim­ply pull up to the pump, fill up and leave.

NGC CNG pres­i­dent Cur­tis Mo­hammed an­nounced plans for the cash­less sys­tem at the of­fi­cial open­ing of Hark­ness En­er­gy’s Trad­er James Unipet ser­vice sta­tion in Mc Bean, Cou­va, on Thurs­day evening.

The new ser­vice sta­tion is the cul­mi­na­tion of months of plan­ning and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Unipet, NGC and Hark­ness En­er­gy to cre­ate a dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el. It is the largest ser­vice sta­tion in the Cou­va area and op­er­ates on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Rahul Ram­per­sad, CEO of Hark­ness En­er­gy, said the project start­ed eight years ago and de­spite bu­reau­crat­ic chal­lenges, the vi­sion had come to fruition. Ram­per­sad said his fo­cus would be on cus­tomer ser­vice to win the hearts of the mo­tor­ing pub­lic. He al­so re­vealed that all the staff at the ser­vice sta­tion are from Cou­va and en­vi­rons.

Mo­hammed said four more CNG sta­tions will soon be open­ing at Cyrus Road, El Soc­coro, as well as Munroe Road in Ch­agua­nas, Preysal in Cou­va and O’Meara, Ari­ma.

In ad­di­tion, there will be up­grades to sta­tions at Point Fortin, PTSC in Port of Spain, Rush­worth Street and Mt Lam­bert. Mo­hammed said by the end of this year, 20 CNG sta­tions will be op­er­at­ing in T&T. He said close to 7000 CNG pow­ered ve­hi­cles are in op­er­a­tion and more than 700,000 ve­hi­cles with an av­er­age age of 15 years that can ben­e­fit from CNG.

Unipet Chair­man Dr Afraz Ali said the com­pa­ny’s fo­cus re­mains on di­ver­si­fy­ing its of­fer­ings to the pub­lic in the dri­ve to re­main prof­itable. He said Unipet is keep­ing a close eye on the qual­i­ty of the fu­el sup­plied by Paria as there have been con­sid­er­able loss­es due to changes in tem­per­a­ture. He said the com­pa­ny en­gaged a con­sul­tant to deal with this is­sue and is call­ing for stan­dard tem­per­a­ture ac­count­ing to deal with the loss­es.


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