Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Inc., based in Oklahoma City, is ready to open six of ten publicly accessible compressed natural gas (CNG) stations it has been building at existing locations across the State of Oklahoma, reports CSP Daily News. The stations are being built and operated in cooperation with Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corporation, one of the country’s largest producers of domestic natural gas. Construction began in December 2011.
Thanks to the partnership with Chesapeake Energy Corp., Love’s will now offer CNG in Altus (grand opening event May 11), Chickasha (May 4), Guthrie (June 8), Lawton (June 12), Norman (July 13) and Oklahoma City (two on July 13). The remaining stations, including another in Oklahoma City, will all be operational before year-end.
““We are pleased at Love’s to join with Chesapeake Energy to add CNG fueling stations at a time when demand is growing for natural gas as a transportation fuel in Oklahoma,” said Jenny Love Meyer, Love’s director of communications when the project was first announced. “Every year more companies are converting their fleets to run on CNG.” Meyer expects the new stations will help escalate demand, especially given CNG currently sells for $1.69 per gasoline gallon equivalent.
In 2009, Oklahoma enacted alternative fuel legislation, spurring an increase in the number of public CNG fueling stations across the state. According to Chesapeake’s Taylor Shinn, senior director of corporate development, Oklahoma is on its way to having over 100 public CNG fueling stations located along major transportation corridors.
Oklahama City-based Love’s, which remains entirely family owned and operated, has more than 290 locations in 39 states. It opened its first public CNG fueling station early 2011 at its store located in Kingfisher, Oklahoma where several companies, including UPS, AT&T and Chesapeake, operate CNG fleet vehicles.
