In an update to its ‘Road To Natural Gas’ report, Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has unveiled three recent deals in the transit, trucking and manufacturing space. Financial terms of the agreements were not disclosed.
LA Metro has signed a 10-year compressed natural gas (CNG) station operation and maintenance contract with Clean Energy for four of LA Metro's CNG bus fueling stations. With this award, Clean Energy will continue to operate and maintain all of the agency's 10 CNG bus fueling stations, as well as an 11th station currently under construction by Clean Energy.
Clean Energy says it anticipates compressing approximately 15 million gallons of natural gas annually for the next 10 years to serve the four LA Metro stations named in the contract. Additionally, the company expects to continue to compress approximately 21 million gallons of natural gas annually for LA Metro's additional stations.
By 2011, LA Metro transitioned its entire directly operated fleet of over 2,000 buses to CNG. LA Metro CEO Arthur T. Leahy notes its buses now operate “more than 80 percent cleaner.”
Clean Energy has also entered into a fueling agreement with trucking company Fox Transportation. Fox is planning to deploy more than 100 medium-duty CNG trucks over the next several months, and the vehicles will fuel at Clean Energy stations throughout Southern California.
Once fully deployed, the fleet is expected to make approximately 900,000 deliveries annually to hospitals throughout California, traveling over 5 million miles per year, and consume approximately 600,000 diesel-gallons-equivalent of CNG fuel annually.
“Our customers have relied on Fox Transportation for more than 20 years to provide the best logistics and pricing available, and to do so fairly,” says Mike Fox, CEO of Fox Transportation. “With natural gas fueling now a reality, we believe providing this cheaper and cleaner fuel option is the right business decision and will strengthen our long-term relationships with customers.”
Under its third newly announced deal, Clean Energy Fuels has partnered with Vermont-based NG Advantage under a 10-year deal to construct a new natural gas compression facility in central New Hampshire. According to Clean Energy, the facility will help expand reach to manufacturing and other energy-intensive customers not on a natural gas pipeline throughout New England and eastern New York.
Operated by Clean Energy, the facility is intended to provide a minimum of 10 million gasoline-gallons-equivalent of CNG per year. The company says this potentially represents more than double the CNG fuel volume supplied by Clean Energy's highest-volume CNG station.
Andrew J. Littlefair, Clean Energy's president and CEO, says these three new deals help underscore the progress natural gas has made as an alternative fuel.
“The perceived barriers and limitations of natural gas continue to be eliminated as new users are seeing both the economic and environmental advantage of transitioning to natural gas,” comments Littlefair. “What this could mean for the natural gas industry and innovation is limitless.”
