Keene hospital to begin using natural gas trucked in from Pembroke

Aug. 18--Natural gas is coming to Keene -- and it's coming in trucks, not a pipeline.

This week, the boilers at Cheshire Medical Center/ Dartmouth Hitchcock Keene that had been burning fuel oil will instead start pumping natural gas brought from a station in Pembroke owned by the Vermont-based natural gas transportation company NG Advantage.

The switch to natural gas is part of a years-long initiative to decrease the hospital's energy use, hospital Vice President of Clinical and Support Services Paul Pezone said.

"Part of that is coming up with alternative energy methods and decreasing our carbon footprint," he said.

Using trucks to transport gas from compressor stations connected to pipelines is a new, and still rare, approach to bringing energy to businesses.

Until Tom Evslin founded NG Advantage in 2011, and a handful of other companies joined it in trucking natural gas, many rural regions had no access to natural gas, even if they were interested in switching, Evslin said.

"They have to use oil, which is dirtier and considerably more expensive than gas," Evslin said.

Because natural gas has a higher boiling point than propane or oil, it must be transported in gas form. Current technologies make this as safe as moving oil or propane in trucks, and natural gas does much less environmental damage when burned, but the process of extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing or horizontal drilling does release some greenhouse gasses into the air.

Once the gas starts flowing, energy costs for the hospital will go down by an estimated 30 percent, or $400,000 a year, Pezone said. The campus' carbon dioxide emissions are expected to decrease by 20 percent.

NG Advantage has already begun trucking gas to APC Paper Group in Claremont; Cheshire Medical will be its second New Hampshire customer and a third, Pike Asphalt in Lebanon, will go on line at the end of August.

The company also has customers in Vermont, northern Massachusetts and eastern New York. It targets large companies like hospitals and factories in rural regions that don't have direct access to natural gas pipeline -- including Keene, Evslin said.

"These places are at an increasing disadvantage ... because they can't afford to be left out of the benefits of natural gas," he said. "It's our role to bring it to them."

Two companies -- EnergyNorth and Northern Utilities -- import natural gas in pipelines from all over the country into parts of New Hampshire.

One branch of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline brings gas to the Merrimack River valley and the Lakes Region. Another pipeline crosses the northern part of the state, and a third runs north along the coast from Haverhill, Mass., to Portland, Maine.

A fourth pipeline, the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System, crosses into the state from Canada but does not deliver any gas to New Hampshire.

None of the pipelines reach as far west as Keene. A proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline that would run from central New York to the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border has generated considerable opposition from environmentalists and officials, and protesters in Maine and Vermont have objected to other proposals to build or extend pipelines into those states.

While the future of those and other projects remain uncertain, NG Advantage diverts gas from the Tennessee Pipeline, which is owned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan, into one of its compressor stations. There, it is squeezed into trucks and moved at very high pressures.

Drivers will take the gas in two trucks per day about 60 miles from the company's compressor station in Pembroke to Keene, depositing the gas into newly converted equipment in the hospital's rear parking lot.

The Keene Fire Department has been trained in how the boilers work in case of an emergency, and is expected to approve the use of the new equipment this week, Pezone said. Officials from the fire department did not return calls for comment.

While the natural gas trucks will arrive at the hospital twice a day -- more frequently than the weekly fuel oil deliveries -- the station will be farther from the hospital and less intrusive, Pezone said.

NG Advantage will monitor the boilers with cameras and sensors.

Michael Mooiman, an associate professor in the business program at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge and the writer of a blog about energy in New Hampshire, says moving natural gas in trucks from pipelines to rural areas is a fairly new idea that could have staying power.

"This is a great way to get natural gas to certain communities," he said. "It's the natural extension of cheap natural gas and people wanting to access it."

Pipelines are a huge investment and take years to build, which is why there will be a place for companies such as NG Advantage in the foreseeable future, Mooiman said.

"I always see there being a niche for compressed natural gas," he said. "It takes an enormous amount of effort to lay a natural gas network, so...if (the trucking company's) prices are good there might be an opportunity."

Hospital officials see another opportunity: to save money and conserve energy at the same time. It cost the hospital about $250,000 to install the new equipment and refit its boilers.

That price that will be offset by energy savings within a year, Pezone said.

Evslin said he recognizes that as pipelines continue to spread farther into the more isolated parts of New England, NG Advantage will lose business.

"When businesses do get a pipeline, then that's the better deal for them," he said. "We know that'll happen, and we know that's best for our customers."

Cheshire Medical's administrators are also keeping their eyes on the future. Its contract with NG Advtantage lasts five years. Not long after that, Pezone expects the hospital could use its new equipment to tap into a pipeline that reaches Keene, he said.

"We're hoping this will open the door for other users to use natural gas," he said.

Hospital officials will keep using some fuel oil to occasionally power the hospital and its emergency generators. That decision was meant to insure the hospital against circumstances like climbing natural gas prices or icy roads preventing the NG Advantage trucks from driving.

Starting this week, though, the hospital's heating systems, food processing center, and sterilization equipment will run on natural gas. It's a new prospect for the region, but one that Pezone said he thinks will pay off.

"We're not afraid to try something new -- we just make sure we do our homework first," he said.

Martha Shanahan can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1434, or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @MShanahanKS.

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