Fueling a Fleet Vehicle for Only 70 Cents Per Gallon - Is This Possible?

It's definitely possible and Mark Wald and Blaise Energy are proving just that.

North Dakota native and co-founder of Blaise Energy formed the company to provide alternatives to flaring. "When oil is extracted from this state, the byproduct or natural gas (NG) comes up with the oil. You can store the oil, truck it off or rail it off but if there's not a pipeline readily available to capture the gas, it gets flared and we try to provide an alternative to flaring."

Wald recently told KXNews in Bismarck, "That gas needs a home and it's our view that the best place to start is right here at home and use that gas locally or even on site - whether it's power generation or powering fleets, or pulling out the NGLs and trucking them to market. It'll be a combination of those that ultimately, I think will put the flare out."

Blaise Energy generates electricity from the captured gas and then delivers that electricity back in to the electrical grid which is used to power homes and businesses. Not only are they reducing flaring and creating electricity, but they've recently started converting their fleet of service vehicles over to CNG in an effort to service their fleet of natural gas generators in the Bakken with service vehicles that also run off of natural gas.  Blaise converted the vehicles themselves as they expand their existing knowledge of how natural gas is used in stationary power generation to how to use that gas as a transportation fuel.  They have been using the vehicles daily since February with great success and are in the process of installing a CNG compressor in their shop which will enable them to create their own motor fuel for approximately 70 cents per gallon.

Wald feels this is an interesting twist on solutions to flaring in the form of driving additional options for that gas produced in the Bakken by fleets operating in the Bakken. 

"CNG has a lot of opportunity as a transportation fuel, however there is only one CNG fueling station in the state and it's in Dickinson," states Wald. "We are trying to bridge the gap. We wanted to get experience using it as transportation fuel ourselves and have successfully been doing so. We proved it! We made it make sense on a fleet of only 2 vehicles."