What about CNG? Compressed nat gas?
Sorry, no.
Crude oil is what it is for very powerful reasons that deal with pure physics. It contains 5.8 million BTUs per barrel.
Natural gas at room pressure is 1/1000th of that amount — 5.8 thousand BTUs per barrel.
Yes, compressing that will cut the 1/1000th number, but not by much at all. Have a look at Honda’s Civic that runs on compressed natural gas. No, HAVE A LOOK at it, carefully. Very carefully past the hype.
It has no trunk. They had to use the trunk area for fuel tank. And even after they did that, they still only manage about 1/3 the range of a conventional gasoline Civic on a single tank of fuel.
Another little absurdity in the numbers games played by the industry. There is the always popular “We have XXXXXX years of natural gas!!!”
Well, you have that much if you 1) can hit your hugely optimistic recovery ratios 2) you have that much if you don’t count the extra consumption that would occur if you tried to make CNG a defacto norm of US cars. If you DO count it, you have about 10 years (because of that crushing BTU differential) 3) Compression is dangerous.
Everyone has their own little underlying theory of why things have fallen apart. They want to immerse themselves in the intricacies of quantitative easing and credit default swaps, but they are wrong, in my opinion.
The reason the engine doesn’t run anymore is the fuel supply is choking off. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about this. Billions of people are going to die, and soon. Our role is to try to arrange so most of them are not Americans.