T. Boone Pickens hopes to set up a chain of retail natural-gas stations in China

[bananas]

http://blogs.wsj.com/energy/2007/07/19/pickens-goes-to-china/

July 19, 2007, 3:43 pm
Pickens Goes to China
Posted by WSJ.com Staff

The Wall Street Journal’s Shai Oster has this report from Beijing on the latest venture by T. Boone Pickens:

Boone Pickens, the billionaire oil investor from Texas, hopes to set up a chain of retail natural-gas stations in China with a local partner.

Pickens, on his first trip to China, and Andrew Littlefair, president of Clean Energy Fuels, said they were looking at potential tie-ups with Chinese firms to sell natural gas for transportation. The men said they had been approached by a Chinese company interested in partnering, but they gave no information on the prospective partner or their timetable for hashing out any deal.

China is struggling with mounting environmental pollution problems, particularly in big cities like Beijing, where air quality has suffered from a boom in car buying by increasingly wealthy Chinese consumers. Officials are especially worried about the issue ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics, to be held in Beijing just over a year from now.

Pickens, who has made most of his fortune investing in oil, is the majority shareholder of Clean Energy Fuels, a company he founded with Littlefair that provides natural gas as an alternative fuel for vehicle fleets in the U.S. and Canada.

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[razzleberry]

1. this won't work in Europe because ?

Europeans are not very smart, or what?

the price difference, between
natural gas(low) and liquid fuel(high)
is almost unbelievable, especially in the UK.

Of course, people would have to try a little bit

.....................
US v. UK

UK gasoline price, twice that of the US
UK natural gas price, two-thirds that of the US

[Eugene]

2. European motor fuel prices are mostly taxes.

Those tax revenues pay for things like public transit.
Europe has different priorities and different ways to
pay for them.

[phantom power]

3. Interesting. I wonder if he realizes he's peddling a fuel that...

is running out as fast as oil.

[tom_paine]

4. Yeeee-haaawwww!