Natural Gas Refueling Infrastructure Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Natural gas refueling infrastructure market is expected to grow at an approximate CAGR of around 3.5% during the forecasting period. With rising initiatives to have cleaner fuel, countries across the globe are concentrating more on having Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) fuel stations and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) fuel stations. Both the fuel station target different sets of vehicles and have a different set of operations before dispensing the fuels to vehicles. The market is directly driven by the growing population of CNG & LNG vehicles around the world and various government policies that are focused on having a lesser carbon emission from vehicles. However, the CNG station installation site not well connected to natural gas grid pipelines, and the LNG station installation site, which is far from the LNG plant or terminal, is expected to act as restraints for the market to grow in future. Moreover, the involvement of particular storage units like high-pressure cylinders and cryogenic cylinders require considerably higher installation costs than gasoline stations.

Key Highlights

• Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is expected to have a higher market share, in 2019, with around 85% market share than the liquefied natural gas.
• With increasing carbon footprint, government across the globe is concentrating more on greener fuels like natural gas, to reduce dependency on petroleum products, to have a low energy cost, and to control the rising air pollution. The rising government initiatives across the globe to accelerate natural gas applications are expected to create an opportunity for the refueling infrastructure to grow in the future.
• The Asia Pacific is dominating the natural gas refueling infrastructure market with the majority of fuel stations presence. The region has nearly 60% of the total natural gas refueling station around the globe.

Key Market Trends

Compressed Natural Gas to Dominate the Market

• Compressed Natural Gas stations dispense natural gas stored in high-pressure cylinders at around 3000 to 3600 psi. The stations are equipped with several units, like the main utility unit, gas dryer, compressor, storage system, and dispensing units, that helps to provide a continuous and safe supply of natural gas to the vehicles.
• Depending upon the nature of the operation and design, the compressed natural gas stations are segregated into fast-fill, time-fill, and a combination of both. Usually, retail stations have fast-fill stations to have quicker filling rate than the other. Time-fill is used on the fleets that have central refueling and can fill over-night.
• During 2018, CNG stations have the majority share of the total natural gas fuel stations across the globe, owing to the technological developments and infrastructure advancement of CNG stations. Moreover, the CNG stations are expected to grow further with growing initiatives by various national and international bodies to have lower carbon footprint across the world.

Asia-Pacific to Dominate the Market

• Asia-Pacific is a significant region globally, that has a presence of nearly 19 million natural gas vehicles. Additionally, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of natural gas fuel stations, in 2018.
• The region’s natural gas stations account for nearly 60% of the total natural gas stations of the world. Almost 97% of the Asia-Pacific’s natural gas stations offer CNG, while rest offer LNG.
• With the increasing population of CNG vehicles in the region, especially in China and India, on account of the initiative to lower the emission of carbon from vehicles, CNG stations are expected to grow during the forecast period.
• Moreover, in terms of LNG stations, the region is in early-stage as compared to Europe. China has near 21 LNG stations, with Japan and India installed its first LNG stations in 2018, and 2019, respectively.
• China Natural Gas Inc, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, China National Petroleum Corporation, BP Plc, Indraprastha Gas Limited, and PTG Energy Public Company Limited are the key CNG refueling station operators in Asia-Pacific.

Competitive Landscape

The natural gas refueling infrastructure market is moderately consolidated. The key owners in the market include Greka Engineering and Technology Limited, Gilbarco Inc., Tulsa Gas Technologies India Pvt. Ltd, Tatsuno Europe AS, Scheidt & Bachmann Gmbh, Sanki Industry Group, Clean Energy Fuels, Cryostar SAS, FTI International Group Inc., and Parker Hannifin Corp.

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