Tulsa World: AT&T announces CNG vehicles

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AT&T announces CNG vehicles

Tom Sewell, owner of Tulsa Gas Technologies, Inc., fills a new AT&T van with Natural Gas from a new CNG terminal at Tulsa Gas Technologies, Inc. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World

By ROD WALTON World Staff Writer
Published: 6/30/2009 8:56 PM
Last Modified: 6/30/2009 9:41 PM

AT&T is learning to love the smell of mercaptan in the morning.

The Dallas-based telecommunications giant is converting a large number of its fleet vehicles to run on compressed natural gas.

Company officials showed off their first Oklahoma conversion Tuesday morning — a Ford van that ran quietly, cleanly and only briefly gave off a sulfuric warning odor when it was being filled up at Tulsa Gas Technologies, 4809 S. 101st East Ave.

“Of course, I drove it the speed limit the whole way,” said AT&T Inc. area manager Deano Cox, who brought the van up the Turner Turnpike from Oklahoma City to Tulsa so his company could show it off. “It’s smooth and quiet. It’s really a nice vehicle.”

This Ford van also is running up front in an AT&T attack against our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and to decrease air pollution. AT&T officials joined state political and business leaders to celebrate its plan to put 30 CNG vehicles into the Oklahoma fleet this year.

Nationwide, the telecommunication firm plans to spend up to $565 million to put 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles into its fleet over the next decade, according to reports. At least 8,000 of those conversions will be to CNG engines.

“No. 1, we’re using local resources discovered and delivered by Oklahoma workers,” Bryan Gonterman, AT&T Oklahoma president, said during the ceremony at Tulsa Gas Technologies.

His comments echoed those of oilmen T. Boone Pickens and George Kaiser, who lament that a high percentage of U.S. energy needs is met through oil imports from unstable countries that sometimes let the revenue slip into the hands of anti-U.S. terrorists.

Gonterman noted the 100-year supply of natural gas domestically and the fact that the fuel source and components can be made right here.

And, of course, there’s the fact that natural gas costs only about $4 per million British thermal units at wholesale these days. Yet Gonterman is optimistic about CNG vehicles even if the price goes up.

“We’ll still see the benefit of lower emissions and lesser dependence on foreign oil,” he said, adding that most of AT&T’s 30 Oklahoma CNG vans won’t roll out until the fourth quarter. “There’s also less maintenance.”

Gonterman and state and Tulsa chamber officials also praised the legislative efforts of state House Speaker Chris Benge to help CNG efforts during the past session. Benge was author of two successful bills that offer tax credits and loan deals for alternative-fuel conversions and CNG fill stations.

The incentives helped push AT&T toward making its CNG commitment stronger in Oklahoma, officials said. State Chamber vice president Ronn Cupp called it “the proper role” of government to encourage public-private partnerships instead of forced quotas.

Benge agreed that was what he was aiming for.

“This is what we had envisioned about a year ago: We envisioned offering a carrot” in the form of incentives, the Berryhill Republican said, “not a stick in the form of mandates.”

Oklahoma has only about 30 CNG stations statewide. Benge contended that incentives could help the number grow over the next decade.

“I think this is the start of something big,” he said.

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By ROD WALTON World Staff Writer

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