Thailand promotes gas vehicles

Sat, 07 May 2005 | Source: DPA

BANGKOK: Thailand's national petroleum company pledged on Friday to invest five billion baht (US$128 million) to transform Bangkok's 9,000 public buses into natural gas vehicles (NGVs), media reports said.

"Turning the city's buses to use natural gas for vehicles (NGV), instead of diesel, will help the nation save a lot of money for oil imports and reduce the country's reliance on imported oil. NGV is also environmentally friendly," Chitrapong Kwangsuksathit, senior executive vice president of PTT Public Company Limited, told the Thai News agency.

State-owned PTT, which has a monopoly over sales of indigenous natural gas, will invest the money to convert the engines of all buses owned by the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA) and its concessionaires into natural gas-based engines.

"The bus operators, both BMTA and its concessionaires, will gradually pay back the engine conversion cost to PTT whenever they fill up with NGV at PTT's stations." -- DPA

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