Vehicular natural gas: cost savings and lower emissions

March 7, 2025

Enrique Taracena Sanz, CEO of Natgas, talks to The Energy Year about the significant cost and emissions savings that can be obtained from using vehicular natural gas and the company’s plans to extend its network of service stations across Mexico’s main highways and maritime ports. Natgas is a wholesale and retail distributor of vehicular natural gas in Mexico.

What is your outlook for vehicular natural gas in Mexico and what market segments are you targeting?
Today Mexico has more or less 13,000 petrol stations and about 4,500 vehicular LPG stations. In comparison, there are only about 120 vehicular natural gas stations, and around 25% of them are ours. Therefore, although steps in the right direction are being taken, the industry has a long way to go.
The new president has introduced incentives for electric mobility, but the reality is that it is going to take a lot of work and at least 10 years for electric vehicles to penetrate properly. This opens opportunities for vehicular natural gas, and we are looking to target high-volume customers such as urban bus fleets, taxis and industrial companies, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises, for whom fuel is often one of the largest expenses.
Our clientele has increased a lot among platforms such as Uber and DiDi, and Cemex has announced it will modify its mixers to run on natural gas. Another big opportunity is in the trucking segment, as many businesses are relocating to Mexico and we are seeing growth in demand for land transportation. For example, in Manzanillo, 10,000 trucks enter and leave the port every day. We believe transportation will be a fast-growing market.

Tell us about the benefits of vehicular natural gas and your network of service stations and partnerships.
The key benefits of vehicular natural gas are cost savings and lower emissions. As a fuel, it is 40% cheaper, which means that over our history, we have saved clients more than MXN 5 billion [USD 238.8 million] in fuel costs. In terms of environmental impact, we have saved 72,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and vehicular natural gas does not emit nitrogen oxide or sulphur.
Regarding our stations, we closed 2024 with 29 service stations, including two private ones for high-volume clients who want to have fuel in their installations. We have private stations in Querétaro and Monterrey. Essentially, we carry the fuel via a virtual pipeline to our customers’ installations, and there we discharge the product.
Importantly, we also have alliances with different conversion workshops that specialise in installing vehicular natural gas kits and providing maintenance services. We have around two conversion workshops per city in our network, and they are key to the growth of our client base.

What is your strategy for growing your network of stations?
In 2025, we will open four new stations, including two in Monterrey and Leon in Q1. Each will cost about USD 3 million to set up. The growth of our stations has to be in line with the growth of our customer base, and that is not an easy process to manage. At the moment, Natgas converts about 400 new clients per month. Industry-wide, the number is about 800.
We aim to have stations every 600 kilometres on all the main highways in the country. The road from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo is the most important, and the highway from Guadalajara to Tijuana has a few service stations. We also want to install stations on the routes that connect important ports such as Manzanillo to the centre of the country, to take advantage of the growing truck transportation sector. The goal is to open five stations per year.

We understand Natgas is also developing a network of virtual pipelines and a biomethane business. Can you provide some details?
The thought process behind our virtual pipelines is that if we already have the compressors, the gas and the containers to feed the mobile stations, why not also offer natural gas to industrial clients who do not have access to gas pipelines?
Today, we can compress gas, transport it in tanker trucks, decompress it and deliver it to industrial end users who do not have access to the pipeline. We are ready to launch the business. All the logistics are in place and we are just waiting for the decompression permit, which we expect to have before the end of 2025. We forecast this business will represent about 10% of our total sales.
Linked to this, we are also exploring the possibility of buying biomethane from producers, transporting it, decompressing it and delivering it to clients. We are in the process of obtaining our first commercialisation permits. This sector is in the very early development phases and we expect it to represent less than 1% of our revenue, but we believe it is a marvellous future energy solution. Biomethane can fuel vehicles, generate electricity or be used in several industrial applications.

What is your vision for Natgas and what is the message you want to convey to the industry, your peers and competitors?
The message we want to convey is that we must continue to consolidate the network. 120 stations is nothing. We believe that there are opportunities in many parts of the country to develop networks of vehicular natural gas stations, which I believe cou;d evolve to become biomethane stations in the future. We must continue to invest and attract new customers, which is the main challenge.
The potential is tremendous. Argentina has 2 million vehicles using natural gas. Mexico only has around 100,000 vehicles, but its national fleet is 20 million cars larger than Argentina’s.
It is not yet clear which fuels will work best in the future, whether it will be hydrogen, electricity, natural gas or diesel and gasoline. Therefore, we must continue to provide the market with alternatives and new substitute fuels such as vehicular natural gas. This will bring greater freedom of choice to customers, as well as environmental and social benefits to the country.

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