Natural gas company Elizabethtown Gas has filed paperwork with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) seeking approval to build public-access compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations in the state.
Additionally, the company is requesting that it be allowed to install and maintain CNG refueling equipment at its commercial and industrial customers' sites in order to accommodate private natural gas vehicle (NGV) fleet refueling.
Elizabethtown Gas, a subsidiary of major energy firm AGL Resources Inc., performed extensive market studies and ‘concluded that the market for compressed natural gas usage in New Jersey largely has been constrained due to limited availability of infrastructure to support natural gas vehicles.’
‘There are only six public CNG fueling stations in New Jersey, and five of them are located in the southern part of the state,’ said Brian MacLean, the company's vice president of operations, in a release. ‘We strongly believe state utilities have an important role to play to stimulate private investment in CNG stations and vehicles, and our proposal will help bring additional stations to other parts of the state.’
Elizabethtown Gas rolled out its first complement of NGVs in the mid-1990s and built CNG refueling capacity in Union, N.J., to serve that fleet. The utility already has plans in the works to expand that site to handle public-access CNG needs.
Utilities that operate in places as diverse as Alabama, Oregon and Indiana have all recently sought regulatory approval for CNG-refueling plans, seeing the growing NGV sector as the next hot market for natural gas end-use.
