Michelle A Eng Leang

For many years now, Com­pressed Nat­ur­al Gas (CNG) has been pro­mot­ed as the al­ter­na­tive trans­port fu­el of the fu­ture for our ve­hi­cles sim­ply be­cause its cheap­er, clean­er, safer and green­er. Trinidad and To­ba­go is well poised to take ad­van­tage of these ben­e­fits falling with­in the Top 50 list of coun­tries pos­sess­ing the world's largest nat­ur­al gas re­serves. Yet with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500,000 ve­hi­cles on our roads, a mere one per cent are fu­eled by CNG. With on­ly eight sta­tions na­tion­wide, mo­torists are stick­ing to the tra­di­tion­al gas and diesel.

Though the pros far out­way the cons in num­ber, the minis­cule num­ber of sta­tions still re­mains the main rea­son mo­torists and com­mer­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions fail to take the plunge. The Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) and the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NP) are go­ing against the grain with their re­cent col­lab­o­ra­tion, hav­ing turned the sod at their planned CNG sta­tion at City Gate. The state of the art CNG fa­cil­i­ty will be built in six months at the South Quay lo­ca­tion and the gas will be sup­plied by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

The PTSC is aim­ing to con­vert its en­tire fleet to CNG and NGC will need to pump the fleet with 40 mil­lion cu­bic feet of gas a day-on­ly one per cent of what Trinidad pro­duces dai­ly. This may re­new the in­ter­est in CNG amongst mo­torists but Trinidad has a lot of catch­ing up to do. Or it may very well be too late.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, 14 mil­lion dri­vers have made the switch to CNG, fill­ing up at over 18,000 sta­tions in more than 84 coun­tries. Coun­tries lead­ing the way in­clude Brazil, Ar­genti­na and Iran with over one mil­lion Nat­ur­al Gas Ve­hi­cles (NGVs) each on their roads.

Ac­cord­ing to a se­nior of­fi­cial at Trinidad's sole li­cenced in­staller of CNG fu­el kits, Au­to­mo­tive Com­po­nents Lim­it­ed of the Neal & Massy Group, a mere 24 ve­hi­cles were con­vert­ed to CNG in 2011 via their fa­cil­i­ty. Again, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the fu­el is the main turn off for mo­torists.

Au­to­mo­tive Com­po­nents ad­mits to re­ceiv­ing a high lev­el of in­ter­est in CNG which al­ways evap­o­rates for this very rea­son. The en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of con­vert­ing to CNG are clear. Harm­ful emis­sions such as car­bon diox­ide and ni­tro­gen ox­ides are re­duced as much as 35 per cent through the use of CNG.

With no ad­di­tives and a clean burn, CNG al­so ben­e­fits the per­for­mance of your ve­hi­cle, leav­ing no by-prod­ucts due to com­bus­tion that leads to the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of en­gine oil and spark plugs. The cost ef­fec­tive ben­e­fits are al­so un­de­ni­able with CNG cost­ing less than half the price of su­per gaso­line. There are tax ben­e­fits that have yet to reach the con­sumer.

As of Jan­u­ary 2011, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GoTT) had im­ple­ment­ed fis­cal ini­tia­tives in sup­port of CNG adop­tion, in­clud­ing the re­moval of mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and VAT on im­port­ed OEM nat­ur­al gas ve­hi­cles (less than two years old). Jump­ing on the heat of that an­nounce­ment, Mas­ka South Mo­tors in La Ro­maine boast­ed of im­port­ing 200 CNG ready ve­hi­cles in a bid to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment's push for Trinidad and To­ba­go to be green­er.

How­ev­er, they have on­ly brought in six units to date, cit­ing com­pli­ca­tions with the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Tax ex­emp­tions which on­ly catered to ve­hi­cles fac­to­ry fit­ted by the Orini­gal Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­er (OEM) with the CNG-on­ly ca­pa­bil­i­ty and not the bi-fu­el ve­hi­cles sup­port­ing both CNG and gas, as brought in by Mas­ka.

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion in Port-of-Spain claim this is the on­ly in­struc­tion they have re­ceived from the Min­istry re­gard­ing this mat­ter. So not on­ly are mo­torists faced with lit­tle ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the fu­el it­self but the tax ex­emp­tions now ap­ply to CNG-on­ly ve­hi­cles which are lim­it­ed if not non-ex­is­tent.

Mas­ka wasn't the on­ly car deal­er­ship burned. Sev­er­al deal­ers, in­clud­ing Toy­ota, Neal and Massy as well as Di­a­mond Mo­tors, have been feel­ing out the CNG mar­ket for pas­sen­ger cars in Trinidad and To­ba­go. All agreed the in­ter­est was over­whelm­ing but the cost-ef­fec­tive as­pect did not stack up. It seems GoTT felt that one could sim­ply call up Nis­san, Toy­ota or Mit­subishi and sim­ply or­der CNG fu­eled ve­hi­cles.

A fur­ther as­sump­tion was made by the Gov­ern­ment in think­ing that the car man­u­fac­tur­ers them­selves man­u­fac­tured and fit­ted the CNG fu­el kits. This is not so, thus mak­ing even new ve­hi­cles un­able to qual­i­fy for the tax ex­emp­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Phillip Knag­gs, pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­tive As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT), once alert­ed to the CNG leg­is­la­tion, all of the new ve­hi­cle im­porters be­gan their re­spec­tive search­es for OEM CNG ve­hi­cles from their sup­pli­ers.

He then said: "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the last in­for­ma­tion I have is that there are no OEM CNG pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cles avail­able for our mar­ket." In ref­er­ence to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Tax ex­emp­tion not par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ing in the over­all cost ef­fec­tive pic­ture for CNG adop­tion, Knag­gs added: "Fu­el sub­sidy sav­ings have to be weighed against the cost of any fis­cal in­cen­tives, all cost/ben­e­fits have to be placed on the scale at the same time.

"For ex­am­ple, if a par­tic­u­lar CNG ve­hi­cle is im­port­ed and re­ceives $70,000 worth of tax ex­emp­tions, this is $70,000 less rev­enue be­ing col­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. If this same ve­hi­cle on­ly saves $6,000 in fu­el sub­sidy a year, then the pay­back pe­ri­od is al­most 12 years.

"To ad­dress the MVT ex­emp­tion from a cost ef­fec­tive stand­point, the an­swer is that the 'MVT Ex­emp­tion' re­al­ly does not make im­port­ed pas­sen­ger cars cheap­er. "Why? Be­cause there is no sup­ply to be­gin with. The leg­is­la­tion was built on a foun­da­tion that was fun­da­men­tal­ly in­cor­rect".

Knag­gs be­lieves the lack of avail­abil­i­ty of OEM CNG pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cles, fu­elling sta­tion ge­o­graph­ic cov­er­age, no suit­able kits avail­able for diesel CNG con­ver­sions, topped with no re­al at­trac­tive fis­cal in­cen­tives for gaso­line con­ver­sions are the pro­hib­i­tive fac­tors for the take off of CNG adop­tion.

He con­clud­ed: "I be­lieve that the dis­cus­sion has to be­gin again, from the be­gin­ning, with all of the stake­hold­ers present. Let us be clear, this ini­tia­tive was em­barked up­on in an at­tempt to re­duce the huge fu­el sub­sidy (the fu­el sub­sidy is es­ti­mat­ed at $4.3 bil­lion).

"All ar­eas of cur­rent au­to­mo­tive tech­nol­o­gy have to be ex­am­ined, in­clu­sive of elec­tric and hy­brid cars. Let's face it, there is no man­u­fac­tur­er that will al­ter their pro­duc­tion plans for a coun­try the size of Trinidad and To­ba­go, or even for a re­gion the size of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

"So, we have to lis­ten to what the sup­pli­ers are telling us, we al­so have to lis­ten to the grow­ing trends of the large mar­kets. Once we do this, we will re­alise that our leg­is­la­tion has to be built to not on­ly achieve what we want to achieve, but al­so to suc­ceed with­in the pa­ra­me­ters im­posed up­on our sup­ply chain by the large mar­kets."