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Wayne.B

On Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:43:07 -0500, wrote:

On Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:25:59 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

Is There a Natural Gas Powered Boat In Our Future?

If someone had asked me that question a year ago, I would have said:
"Nonsense, can't possibly happen." Now I'm a little less sure of
that.

Some interesting things have been going on. The supply of natural
gas in the US and Canada has dramatically increased as a result of
improved drilling and exploration technology. We now have more
natural gas than we can readily use or transport, and as a result, at
least in the short term, prices for natural gas have decreased. As
an example, the historic price multiple between a barrel of oil and a
thousand cubic feet of natural gas has been approximately 10 to 1.
It is now at 40 to 1, a huge reduction. This has resulted in a number
of efforts to leverage natural gas as a transportation fuel, i.e.,
trucks, trains, ships, taxi fleets, busses, etc.

Obviously a lot of new infrastructure needs to be built to provide for
compression, transportation and end user filling stations. A lot of
work has already been done in the area of diesel to natural gas
conversion engines. Once a few more of these pieces come together,
natural gas as a transportation fuel will become much more common than
it is now.

In the meanwhile there are some interesting investment opportunities.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/326572-2-energy-markets-and-their-implications-for-investors

In the interest of full disclosure, I own some of the stocks mentioned
in that article.

I suppose it might be possible for big boats but I am not sure how it
works on small outboard boats. (you need a huge tank). In that regard
propane is better, higher energy density.

I did do a little research into propane and decided the change to an
EFI outboard might be minimal tho. It might not be more than a
software tweak and a gas regulator where the VST is now.

I have some T Boone stock myself.

===

We had a family friend back in the 60s who worked in the oil fields of
western Kansas. Propane for him was free for the asking since a lot
of it just got flared off as a nuisance. He and is friends did a lot
of shade tree gasoline to propane conversions.

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