City’s clean buses to be refueled
By Anh Quan - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – PetroVietnam Southern Gas Joint Stock Co., or PV Gas South, has agreed to provide compressed natural gas (CNG) for HCMC’s only two operational environmentally friendly buses and 21 other vehicles to be imported.
PV Gas South’s decision to resume supply of CNG following an interruption will promote the use of commuter buses running on this clean fuel.
A reduction in pollution-causing fuels has been factored into the city’s transport development plan in the years to come, PV Gas South director Tran Thanh Nam told the Daily.
The CNG supplier earlier closed its CNG pumping station as only two buses would not help it generate as sufficient revenue as required for operating the station. Then the possibility of bus operators failing to acquire 21 CNG-fired buses by September 5 was deemed as low.
The HCMC government recently wrote to the Government proposing exempting import tax for CNG-fired buses; otherwise, the city’s clean transport development strategy would turn out to be infeasible since prices of gas-powered buses are almost double those of diesel-fueled buses.
Nguyen Tuan Viet, deputy director of Saigon Passenger Transport Co., said the firm would speed up import of 21 CNG-fired buses within this year if the propose won Government approved.
After the test run, local transport enterprises saw that the CNG could bring economic efficiency and reduce environmental pollution. Their operating costs are around 30% lower than those running on diesel oil.