GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Pres­i­dent of NGC CNG Shel­don Sylvester says with in­creas­ing prices of liq­uid fu­els world­wide, nat­ur­al gas re­mains a very vi­able op­tion for any one look­ing to save mon­ey. Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion’s (PTSC) Com­pressed Nat­ur­al Gas (Cfill­ing sta­tion at City Gate, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Sylvester not­ed that CNG is now 83 per cent cheap­er than su­per gaso­line.

Ac­cord­ing to Sylvester as the trans­porta­tion fu­el sec­tor con­tin­ues to evolve with the in­tro­duc­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy and poli­cies, CNG con­tin­ues to play a role in the sup­ply mix in the medi­um to long term.

“We ex­pect with the ris­ing cost of liq­uid fu­els, peo­ple’s trans­porta­tion us­age will ad­just. An in­creas­ing num­ber of peo­ple may opt to use pub­lic trans­port even those who own per­son­al ve­hi­cles, an op­por­tu­ni­ty for both PTSC, stake­hold­ers in the maxi taxi busi­ness and NGC CNG,” Sylvester said.

In the last sev­en years, he added, NGC CNG had in­stalled com­pres­sion, stor­age and dis­pens­ing with state-of-the-art fast fill­ing equip­ment at 11 ac­tive pub­lic fill­ing sites.

Chair­man of PTSC Ed­win Good­ing who al­so spoke said hav­ing a per­ma­nent sta­tion had many ben­e­fits, not­ing that CNG has giv­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion the op­tion of low­er costs and ac­cess clear­er fu­el for the en­vi­ron­ment.

Fur­ther, Good­ing added, the abil­i­ty to re­fu­el had sev­er­al lo­gis­ti­cal ben­e­fits, one be­ing time ef­fi­cien­cy.

“The com­mis­sion­ing of this per­ma­nent fa­cil­i­ty re­moves the need for bus­es to be fu­elled ex­ter­nal­ly at PTSC’s small­er and tem­po­rary CNG fill­ing sta­tion.

“The in­crease in the num­ber of bus­es that are now able to be fu­elled at the Port-of-Spain de­pot re­duces wait time there­by, in­creas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” Good­ing ex­plained.

He added that in 2014 PTSC pur­chased 35 bus­es that were fu­elled by the tem­po­rary sta­tion and that the fleet was ex­pand­ed by 25 in 2018 and then again in 2020, adding 12 bus­es.

“The fu­elling of our bus­es marks phase one of this ini­tia­tive while phase two will deal with ser­vic­ing Gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles and maxi taxis,” Good­ing not­ed.

On be­com­ing more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly suf­fi­cient, Good­ing said PTSC was cur­rent­ly ex­am­in­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of in­stalling a rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing sys­tem to wash their ve­hi­cles.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan who was sup­posed to de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress did not at­tend.