CHARLES KONG SOO

With many mo­torists con­cerned about pos­si­ble in­creas­es in the price of fu­el in the bud­get to be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to­day, Roger Sant, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, NGC CNG Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, says there are ways to save at the pump.

“CNG is Trinidad and To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al gas be­ing put to pro­duc­tive use in the vi­tal trans­porta­tion sec­tor with­out a drain on for­eign re­serves,” he said.

“A switch to CNG will save a ve­hi­cle own­er thou­sands of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly on their fu­el bill, since CNG is priced at $1 per litre gaso­line equiv­a­lent.

“Switch­ing to CNG is the on­ly op­tion to save mon­ey with your ex­ist­ing ve­hi­cle. There are thou­sands and thou­sands of very good road wor­thy ve­hi­cles in the coun­try which are all can­di­dates for a CNG con­ver­sion.”

He added: “A gaso­line con­ver­sion costs in the re­gion of $12,000 and de­pend­ing on your mileage, you can re­cov­er your in­vest­ment in just a few months.”

Sant said taxi dri­vers can pay back for their con­ver­sion in as lit­tle as six months and switch­ing to CNG cuts par­tic­u­late emis­sions by 30 per cent.

While there is al­ready spec­u­la­tion about the sup­ply of liq­uid fu­el with the im­pend­ing clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre, Sant said there are no such is­sues with CNG as the sup­ply and trans­porta­tion of that fu­el is se­cure through NGC’s pipeline net­work.

CNG will not run out, there will al­ways be a sup­ply in­de­pen­dent of the liq­uid fu­el sup­ply, he as­sured.

Sant said petrol and diesel ve­hi­cles can be con­vert­ed to CNG.

In the case of pub­lic trans­port, all bus­es and maxi taxis are pow­ered by diesel, which is not the clean­est of fu­els and is be­ing phased out in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“Shouldn’t these ve­hi­cles be all CNG?” Sant asked. “Think about the cost sav­ings for the PTSC and maxi taxi own­ers, plus 30 per cent less par­tic­u­late emis­sions.”

Sant said the fu­el sta­tion net­work sup­ply­ing CNG to cus­tomers is ex­pand­ing every year, so that fu­el is be­com­ing more ac­ces­si­ble with new state of the art, re­li­able safe equip­ment, ca­pa­ble of fill­ing a ve­hi­cle in un­der three min­utes.