OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2012. KAMAZ vehicles are taking part in the sixth Blue Corridor NGV Rally travelling from 7 to 24 September along the following route: Moscow - Smolensk - Orsha - Minsk - Brest - Warsaw - Ostrava - Prague - Karlsruhe - Paris - Brussels - Essen - Berlin.

The purpose of the "green" Blue Corridor 2012 Rally is to educate the public on the benefits of natural gas fuel as the most appropriate substitute for petrol in Europe and Russia. With rising world oil prices, this fuel project is especially important today.

The Blue Corridor Rally 2012 paused in Minsk for a roundtable discussion on the global experience in compressed natural gas (CNG) in transport and the development of fueling infrastructure in Belarus. The participants and guests could see Russian and foreign NGVs exhibited at the central square of Minsk. KAMAZ, together with its distributor – OOO RariTEK, presented new NGVs: a KAMAZ-65116-34 prime mover with a cryo tank running on liquefied natural gas and a KAMAZ-6520-34 dump truck with a carrying capacity of 20 tons, as well as a NEFAZ-30-31 city bus. As a result, the Government of Belarus signed a protocol on the development of gas as motor fuel for transport companies.

The keynote event of the “eco-rally” will be a roundtable in Brussels for NGV producers and experts. European Union officials – those who determine the fuel and environmental policy in Europe for decades – will also participate in an open discussion of how natural gas vehicles can positively impact Europe’s economy and environment.

The world market of NGVs is developing rapidly. The main advantage of natural gas as a motor fuel is its minimal impact on the environment, which is especially important in large cities. The number of vehicles using methane as a motor fuel is now more than 13 million units. According to the forecast of the International Gas Union, the growing fleet of NGVs will number 50 million units by 2020 and more than 100 million units by 2030. Natural gas is used as a vehicle fuel in more than 80 countries. The NGV fleet is annually growing by 26%.