State regulators and alternative fuel advocates are increasingly finding that the roads are getting crowded with natural gas vehicle (NGV) proposals as the transportation sector tries to make more use of abundant U.S. supplies. Oregon, Texas and Utah are the latest to extend their push to expand the market for NGVs.

Last week Clean Energy Fuels Corp. gave a boost across the board, signing three major deals in transit, trucking and manufacturing. The triple-play is another indication that “perceived barriers and limitations of natural gas continue to be eliminated,” said CEO Andrew Littlefair.

Clean Energy and NG Advantage agreed to a 10-year plan to construct a facility to produce compressed natural gas (CNG) in central New Hampshire to bring natural gas to various manufacturing and other energy-intensive customers not connected to a gas pipeline throughout New England and eastern New York state. The New England facility could provide a minimum of 10 million gasoline-gallons-equivalent of CNG annually, which represents more than twice the volume supplied by Clean Energy’s current highest-volume CNG station.

In the transit sector, Clean Energy signed a 10-year deal with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, making it an exclusive CNG fuel partner for one of the nation’s largest “clean” fuel transit fleets. Under the agreementl Clean Energy would continue to operate and maintain all of the 10 CNG bus fueling stations and one more now under construction.

The Los Angeles project would provide about 36 million gallons of gas to be compressed every year, according to Clean Energy. That includes 15 million gallons annually at four stations and 21 million gallons a year for the transportation authority’s other CNG stations. It has converted its entire fleet of 2,000 buses to CNG, which it said has allowed it to operate 80% “cleaner.”

Clean Energy’s third agreement is to deploy medium-duty CNG trucks for U.S. service delivery for Fox Transportation. The agreement calls for fueling and deploying more than 100 trucks over the next few months, using existing fueling stations throughout Southern California. Fox, a hospital delivery service provider in the state, is expected to consume 600,000 diesel-gallon-equivalent of natural gas annually for 900,000 deliveries and more than 5 million miles, Clean Energy said.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, NW Natural is accelerating its NGV use and fueling infrastructure, and CEO Gregg Kantor said last week during a quarterly earnings conference call. Kantor outlined a pending request to the Oregon Public Utility Commission to establish a CNG service for fleet operators (seeNGI, July 8).

Aiming for a report to the state legislature by the end of September, the Utah Public Service Commission (PSC) last week also held a hearing to examine how best to expand the use of natural gas and other alternative fuels in the transportation sector. Many energy representatives and alternative fuel advocates urged that market-based approaches be applied.

Separately, Texas plans to more than double to nearly 100 the number of NGV fueling stations by adding 69 new stations, 45 of which would be publicly available, according to plans outlined by Pioneer Natural Resources’ Lynn Lyon, director of fuel market development.

At this same time, Range Resources Corp. said its operations in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and other states now operate almost entirely on natural gas; management lauded General Motors Corp. and the Chrysler Group for helping in the transition. Range now has 184 CNG vehicles in its corporate fleet, with 100 of them in southwest Pennsylvania.