I have 3 concerns: 1)Environmental damage from extraction

Here in Massachusetts we've got CNG filling stations scattered about, so that's a start. But I'm strongly skeptical of two things: first, that natural gas prices are going to "collapse"-- in this region it's the predominant home heating fuel. When the electric utilities switched over to natural gas (because the plants are quicker and cheaper to build), many could no longer afford to heat their homes and home heating assistance funds ran out. Our bill runs over $900/month in the winter-- what will happen when I'm competing with automobiles for that fuel? Boone trumpets CNG-fueled transportation, but that will never be an option in the Boston area. The $14.9 billion Central Artery Project ("Big Dig") made sure of that: no CNG is allowed in any portion of this extensive tunnel system. The MBTA bought a fleet of CNG ("nabi") buses with big hoopla, and later was forced to quietly retire them all. Even if certain bus routes could avoid the tunnels, getting the buses back to maintenance or refueling yards became a logistical and traffic nightmare. Even before the tunnels, the MBTA had a problem-- refueling a diesel bus takes only a few minutes, while refueling a CNG bus took more than 20. If I had a CNG-powered vehicle, a trip to the airport would take 60-120 minutes longer than it does now.

My family owns 3 cng vehicles, and they work! I paid 93 CENTS per gallon to fill up last time, and can drive down the road knowing I'm not using a drop of gasoline, it's cleaner for the environment, and we got a big tax credit for buying them (used, even!). This is such a simple solution if people would stop being so stubborn about making a simple change.

There is an abundance of natural (NG) gas in North America. However, converting millions of vehicles to use straight NG is expensive and there is no infrastructure advantage to doing so. I suggest converting NG to a mixed alcohol which is a very energetic and clean additive to gasoline or deisel at a safe 15% level can work immediately. Ethanol, at two carbon atoms, is a weak alcohol and it costs more to produce from corn than it delivers in the vehicle. www.StandardAlcohol.com has a patented method of producing mixed alcohol efficiently from NG, whether it is contaminated with carbon dioxide or sour with sulphur. Oil companies flare off 400 million tons of unusable NG annually into the atmosphere with no return on investment. That NG could immediately be salvaged and turned into a liquid that has an extremely low freezing point and could never spill into the environment causing harm as bugs would eat it immediately. Further, there are many stranded fields of NG where there is neither oil nor means of extraction. Converting the NG to alcohols in liquid form and shipping/piping out is cheaper.