Is Utah leading the way to the future fueling of cars and trucks?

It may seem surprising, but until recently natural gas was considered an unusable waste and was burned off at oil wells and refineries since it was difficult and dangerous to transport. That problem was solved by long-distance pipelines and by transporting liquefied natural gas by ship, train, and truck. Utah was the first of the 50 states to make a major push to use natural gas for automobiles, and by the end of August 2008, when gasoline was surging above $4 a gallon, the idea was a big hit. Unusual everywhere else at the time, compressed natural gas was said to be widely available for automobiles in Utah, and it was cheap, about 87 cents for enough to run a car the same distance as a gallon of gasoline.

The idea had a lot of support—“Utah shows that the technology is here and the fuel works and the fuel is better than foreign oil,” said T. Boone Pickens, who has been promoting natural gas and pushing for a big transition from petroleum to alternative energy by using natural gas as the major intermediary. When Jon M. Huntsman Jr. was governor of Utah (he’s now the American ambassador to China), he spent $12,000 of his own money to convert the state SUVs he drove so they could run on natural gas. “We can create a model that others can look to,” he said. “Every state in America can make this a reality.”^[2] T. Boone Pickens’s energy plan, available on his website, states that “natural gas is our country’s second largest energy resource and a vital component of our energy supply. Ninety-eight percent of the natural gas used in the United States is from North America. But 70% of our oil is purchased from foreign nations.” It goes on to say that “domestic natural gas reserves are twice that of petroleum. And new discoveries of natural gas and ongoing development of renewable biogas are continually adding to existing reserves.”^[3] Congress got into the act as well, with Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, saying on “Meet the Press” that “you can have a transition with natural gas that is cheap, abundant, and clean.”