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Published on November 29, 2007

 PTT will set up seven large natural gas for vehicles (NGV) stations across Bangkok for a total of Bt560 million, mainly to serve taxis.

Nuttachat Charuchinda, PTT's executive vice president for natural-gas vehicles, yesterday said the company would create large stations, each of which could supply 60 tonnes of NGV. Each station will cost Bt80 million.

He said they were expected to be the world's largest NGV stations to be located in seven key areas: Rangsit, Bang Na, the Southern bus terminal, Rama IX, Romklao, Kanchanaphisek, and Morchit.

The company is in talks with the Energy Ministry to lease or purchase land plots from the State Railway of Thailand for the new stations. Construction will be completed next year.

At the same time, PTT is trying to convince liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stations to provide NGV as an additional product as part of plans to expand NGV sales in inner Bangkok. Currently, about 50 LPG stations are ready to provide NGV.

The setting up of the seven new NGV stations is part of a plan to encourage 50,000 taxis to use NGV in the next two years, up from 16,000 now. To carry out the plan, PTT has to have a total of 130 stations in Bangkok by 2009, up from 90 at present.

He said NGV consumption had risen rapidly from 25,000 cars monthly in January to 51,000 this month, representing monthly growth of 10 per cent.

About 5,000 cars were equipped with the NGV system as of this month, compared with 3,600 last month. The consumption of NGV surged from 300 tonnes per day to the current 900 tonnes.

The higher NGV demand is due more to rising oil prices than to the government's plan to float the cooking-gas price, he said.

He admitted that using NGV gas was less convenient than using cooking gas, due to the small number of NGV stations, which had discouraged taxis from adopting NGV.

PTT has also adjusted its NGV supply by expanding the distribution capacity of its NGV mother station and creating three new mother stations, which will increase NGV supply to retail stations.

He said the entire project was expected to be completed within the next six months, which would boost the NGV supply to retail stations to 2,500 tonnes a day next June and 3,000 tonnes at the end of next year.

"Currently, the NGV supply to Bangkok is only 650 tonnes a day, falling short of demand of 700-800 tonnes a day," he said.

PTT will also extend the free installation period, in order to allow more taxi owners to fit their vehicles with the NGV system.

Energy Reporters

 The Nation