| | | Hi Elroy,
Nice to see you commenting again. I remember in the 1980's, Houston's municipal bus fleet was CNG powered, this was back when gas was dirt cheap. We even had a handful of CNG filling stations around the metroplex and not just for municipal vehicles, but also for privately owned vehicles too. If I had been living in the area I would have seriously considered a conversion, which can be done fairly cheaply and still provide the option of switching back to gasoline at will.
But the oil crash of the mid-80's made oil so cheap that the additional operating costs of CNG quickly drove the city back to conventional diesels, and the CNG stations closed down, never to open again.
Now we have a few more alternatives, as you say. There are innovations with using activated charcoal as an adsorption medium for gas, and they will eventually improve the safety of lithium batteries to where they don't catastrophically fail as frequently as they do now - but do you think the low price of oil might actually sharpen the competition and tend to drive interest away from exploring these alternatives, as it did in the 80's?
Just my opinion, I think it's likely whatever demand destruction we see here in the USA will be swallowed up by the emerging, heavily carbon-based developing nations, whose exponential growth rates are now becoming proportionally meaningful in the energy markets. They are still busy, to varying extents, moving away from coal. I am guessing price of oil back over $70 in a year's time. I too think we are near the bottom now, and that the numerical bottom may take a while to find itself.
New Year Regards to All,
Aggie |
|
