China unveils policy to encourage use of natural gas in transportation

As published by Reuters, the Asian country is poised to triple natural gas use to meet about 10 percent of total energy demand by the end of this decade, to cut emissions from coal use, and dependence on oil imports. “It’s certainly a good policy that will see gas replacing quite a lot of diesel, which is the main fuel used in China’s transport sector and is much more polluting,” said analyst Yan Kefeng of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA).

To supply the fuel, leading energy firms CNOOC Ltd, PetroChina and Sinopec Corp are building a string of facilities along China’s eastern shore to import LNG, gas super-cooled to liquid form for shipping in tankers. Others are building smaller plants inland to liquefy natural gas from gas fields distant from the main pipeline networks. LNG tankers then truck them across the country to end-users.

Only in the eastern province of Jiangsu, the number of LNG vehicles is expected to exceed 6,000 by 2015. Southern Guangdong province wants to replace LPG, a more costly refinery product, with LNG for buses.

Moreover, experts attending a forum in Southwest China’s Chongqing municipality predicted as many as 1.5 million natural gas vehicles could be seen on the roads in the country by 2015.