On Friday, officials from Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG), the city-parish administrative body of Lafayette, La., unveiled the city's second public-access compressed natural gas (CNG) station, which will serve the area's growing complement of natural gas vehicles.
Located at the city's public works facility on E. University Ave., the $2.1 million LCG station joins Apache Corp.'s existing CNG refueling site on E. Verot School Rd. That location opened last summer, mainly to accommodate Apache's own NGVs.
LCG notes that CNG is retailing for $1.46/GGE at its new station. The city itself is one of the main customers, as seven of its transit buses are already running on natural gas. Another 12 buses will be converted to CNG in the coming months, and LCG anticipates that a total of 22 natural gas buses will be online by the end of this year.
Plans call for more than 60 municipal NGVs to be deployed over the next several years.
‘Lafayette is a leader in the oil and gas industry, and we need to continue to provide leadership in the use of CNG for our vehicles because it is better for our environment and provides significant savings for our transportation costs for fuel,’ said city-parish president Joey Durel.
Funding for the station was aided by an $833,000 grant from the state Department of Natural Resources, and the Louisiana legislature mobilized an additional $1 million through the state's Act 41 legislation.
