The international NGV rally started on October 7, during the opening ceremony of St. Petersburg International Gas Forum. Major organizers of the rally are Gazprom Export, Gazprom Gas-Engine Fuel, and E.ON Global Commodities, and Kamaz is one of the leading participants. During this forum Gazprom and Kamaz also stressed their cooperation to boost Russian NGV market development involving construction of CNG stations and service facilities.
The ‘Blue Corridor-2014’ vehicles will drive along the roads of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and Belarus, covering altogether over 6,000 km, and finishing on October 31. This particular route has been chosen deliberately as many of those countries have been already demonstrating significant demand of natural gas as transport fuel.
On October 8, the caravan already crossed the state frontier of the Russian Federation in the border town of Ivan-Gorod, and journeyed towards the Estonian city of Tartu. The NGVs refueled at Eesti Gaas station, the Estonian gas company which currently operates five CNG stations in the country: two in Tallinn, and single stations in Narva, Tartu and Pärnu.
The municipality of Tartu, where the first round table discussion was held on October 9, bought the first five Scania CNG buses in 2011. “The experience of deploying them has become a basis for us to plan a larger procurement. It is still hard to predict how many new NGVs will be purchased, but it could amount to 25-50 units. As a result, we can determine the perspectives for the development of the NGV market in Estonia,” said the head of Tartu’s Department of Municipal Economy, Rein Haak.
Source: Blue Corridor
