"Nat gas vehicles are not some far-fetched pipe dream," Jim Cramer said Friday. "They're already here and they work just fine. A whole lot better than the electric vehicles favored by the White House." No wonder T. Boone Pickens put a good part of his fortune in a company that focuses on this reality--Clean Energy Fuels (Nasdaq:
CLNE). Political power-brokers have invested in this phenomenon too. It has been rumored that such luminaries as Nancy Pelosi have also invested in the financial possibilities of having trucks and cars that run on natural gas.
In his TV show "Mad Money" last Friday, Cramer talked about a publicity oriented accomplishment that the former CEO of EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT) completed recently. From the CNBC web site comes this explaination of what it was all about:
"Cramer pointed to Murray Gerber, who recently drove across the country in a natural gas-powered Hummer. Starting in Santa Monica, Calif. on April 28, Gerber and his wife drove the vehicle all the way to New York City...Gerber sought to prove there are already enough nat gas re-fueling stations in place to make a transcontinental trip possible."
That kind of trip wouldn't be possible with an electric car, according to Cramer. He proclaimed that electric cars can travel up to 200 miles before needed a charge, which takes up to eight hours to complete, and with the few charging stations that exist now wouldn't accommodate a cross-country trip and that one of the main reasons the "Mad Money" host thinks natural gas-powered cars are the future.
It's a great interview and quite an eye-opener. You can watch it in its entirety at http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000021955
Companies like EQT and Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK) will be part of the inner circle of beneficiaries of this "sea-change" in the direction of alternative fuel and energy.
By the way, there are currently 110,000 Natural Gas Vehicles (NGV) in the U.S., and reportedly more than 12 million worldwide. In the U.S. we already has 1,100 refueling stations and that number will be growing exponentially in the next 10 years, if not sooner.
EQT Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as an integrated energy company in the United States. It operates in three segments: EQT Production, EQT Midstream, and Distribution.