First, a little background about LPG (Liquified petroleum gas) or GPL as it’s called in French and in Tunisia:
Liquified petroleum gas is a mixture of hydrocarbon gases used as a fuel in heating appliances and vehicles, and increasingly replacing chlorofluorocarbons as an aerosol propellant and a refrigerant to reduce damage to the ozone layer.
Varieties of LPG bought and sold include mixes that are primarily propane, mixes that are primarily butane, and mixes including both propane and butane. Propylene and butylenes are usually also present in small concentration. A powerful odorant, ethanethiol, is added so that leaks can be detected easily.
LPG is manufactured during the refining of crude oil, or extracted from oil or gas streams as they emerge from the ground.
LPG (also known as autogas) is widely used as a “green” fuel for internal combustion engines as it decreases exhaust emissions.
Which brings us to the use of LPG in cars and transportation in Tunisia; I remember as part of one of the eco-friendly pushes a few years ago, some buses running on LPG were introduced into the the transport lines. Unlike the regular yellow buses, these were painted orange, so they were easily identifiable. I don’t really know why they didn’t go on changing the bus fleet to LPG powered ones as I barely see any these days.
Anyway, over the past couple of days, I’ve been seeing more and more cars running on LPG, most of them taxis, but a number of them personal cars too, which I think is great.
I hope the number of cars running on LPG increases and that the number of fuel stations providing LPG grows.
Currently, from the bit of research I did online, I found that the LPG is available for the Tunis region at the Agil station on the Tunis-Bizerte Highway (RN8).
There is another Agil station that serves up LPG on the highway to the south of Tunisia.
Sfax and Gabes seem to be the cities where you’ll have no problem finding LPG, with Gabes even having an LPG-only station, and most of the taxis running on LPG.
Sousse has 3 fuel stations that provide LPG and Gafsa has one.
What I find really good about this all is the movement towards more eco-friendly fuels. I hope it continues and that the government encourages people to use cleaner fuels and technologies.
Up to now, there is only one Hybrid car in Tunisia, which is a Toyota Prius.
But with Toyota’s recent efforts to strengthen it’s presence in Tunisia, I hope more people will look at the hybrid alternative too.
I think that busses should use natural gas (CNG) or LPG for a cleaner environment. In the city where I am living, many busses used run with CNG ( http://www.larsers.de/bus/fahrzeug/citaro/Bilder/vollbild-stadtbus.jpg ). New Diesel busses ( http://www.uestra.de/presse/uestra_neuer_Bus_urbino12_download.jpg )have a strict emission standard (EURO 3) and a Diesel Particulate Filter. I hope Tunisian transportation corporations as TRANSTU will invest more in this sector.
I’ll always remember walking my dog at a park overlooking a facility at which LNG (as opposed to LPG) bulk haulers used to dock to unload. Big ships hauling huge cargoes of frozen LNG from your part of the world to ours. A nice woman with a wry sense of humor also walked her dog at about the same time every day and there we stood one twilight, watching one of those enormous ships pull in as our pets did their thing. She asked what its cargo was and I told her. “Could that be dangerous?” she asked. I said yes, but given that the cargo was frozen, it would take a knowledgable effort to get it to detonate. “What would happen if it did?” she asked. I speculated that we’d have an explosion rivaling that of Hiroshima and would no longer have to contend with our hated mutual enemy, the city’s Animal Control Officer. “Who would do such a terrible thing?” she asked, then before I could reply said, “Of course, the world is filled with crazy people.” “Certainly there are some in my family,” I laughed. “Mine, too,” she said.
A few weeks later it was 9/11 and she disappeared, her large elegant house emptied and for sale. The neighbors were surprised that I didn’t know she was one of the bin Ladin relatives whisked out of the country at the request of the Saudi government.
Pity they didn’t whisk the Animal Control Officer out of the country instead.