SAVING DETROIT

If you live in Washington and you’re a guest on Fox News, the producers graciously send a car and driver to take you to the studio and back home after the show.  One of the Fox drivers is a colorful character everyone calls "Wolf."  He grew up in Yugoslavia (in what is now Bosnia), and he told me a very illuminating story.

Wolf had read The Natural Gas Solution (soon after we first met he became a TTP subscriber) and explained how he knew it was accurate.  "I drove a Yugo car when I lived in Sarajevo back in the 70s," he said.  "Gas was so expensive and it was rationed.  So I, like several of my friends, installed a CNG (compressed natural gas) tank in the trunk, hooked a line up to the carburetor, and ran the car on natural gas.  We got such great mileage and the car ran so well, that we could drive to Trieste (in Italy) on weekends."

Now if a non-mechanic Bosnian Serb could get his 1970s East Bloc tin can car with a lawn mower engine (replete with a wheezy carburetor, not fuel injection) to run great on CNG – think of what a "natural" solution it is for modern cars.

It was by talking to Wolf that made me realize how the Natural Gas Solution can save Detroit.

Yes, Detroit’s wounds are self-inflicted.  GM and Ford committed corporate suicide by surrendering to the UAW, bankrupting themselves with lunatic pension costs, health care costs, work rule costs, and hordes of union workers who have to be paid for not working.

Yet if GM and Ford really do go under, US taxpayers are going to have to pay off scores of billions in pension costs – and since the payoff will be around 40 cents on the dollar, the retired workers will get shafted as well.

The way for GM and Ford to revive themselves and become solvent again is theoretically easy:  sell lots more cars.  Specifically, sell lots more big, high-profit, gas-guzzling cars like Chevy Suburbans, Caddy Escalades, Lincoln Navigators, Ford Expeditions, and Hummer 2s.  Good luck, right?

But what if it cost only three cents a mile or so to drive these big bad boys?  Even if they got 10 miles a gallon, that would be a cost-equivalent of 30 cents a gallon.  Would that make them more attractive to you than a midget car that gets "good mileage"?  Sure it would.

When gas is cheap, Americans buy big cars with big engines.  So the way to save Detroit is with cheap gas – and the way to do that is not with cheap gasoline, but cheap natural gas and "dual-fuel" (natural gas/gasoline or diesel) vehicles as outlined in The Natural Gas Solution.

Two key conservative Republican politicians in Michigan may embrace the Natural Gas Solution as a winning strategy for their election in November. 

Dick DeVos is now polling ahead of incumbent governor Jennifer Granholm, who, as a Democrat, hasn’t a clue of how to revive Detroit.  The Natural Gas Solution may be the solution for DeVos to be the next governor of Michigan.

Keith Butler is running against incumbent Debbie Stabenow for the Senate.  A charismatic black conservative, he first has to win the GOP primary in August.  Already fervently arguing for reducing restrictions on oil and gas drilling, embracing the Natural Gas Solution may propel him to primary victory.  Armed with the solution to saving Detroit, he could cruise to a win over Stabenow in November who is arguably the dumbest Senator in Washington (Patty Murray, D-WA, may be equally IQ-challenged).

Saving Detroit includes more than making and selling a lot of big cars.  The same manufacturing and production technology required for automotive engines is needed for CNG home/commercial compressors, tanks, and related equipment.

Producing millions of such items will mean a lot of jobs for Detroit companies like GM and Delphi.

But it’s not just auto workers in Detroit to whom Butler and DeVos can appeal.  Not just city folks, but all of rural Michigan.  Propane is a by-product of natural gas processing.  Greatly increase natural gas production and you greatly increase propane production which concomitantly decreases its cost. 

Greater supply and cheaper cost of propane will mean a lot to all those living in rural Michigan who heat and power their homes with propane – as it will in all of rural America. Over 6.5 million American households use propane as their primary heating fuel.

I’ll soon be meeting with DeVos and Butler regarding the Natural Gas Solution, as well as a number of Congressfolk here in Washington.  A breakthrough came yesterday, May 10, in Congress when the House Appropriations Committee voted 37-25 to lift a 25 year-old ban on US offshore gas exploration.

The legislation’s sponsor, John E. Peterson (R-PA) commented:

Congress took an important first step today toward fixing an energy supply problem it created more than a generation ago. The burden has now shifted onto those who oppose the safe production of domestic natural gas to explain to the American people why this country should continue to lock up vast reserves of energy while home-grown industries and the American consumer continue to pay the highest prices in the world.

Next week will be a busy one for me on Capitol Hill.  For Detroit isn’t all that will be saved by the Natural Gas Solution.