Capital Sand opens natural gas station to fuel truck fleet

The Capital Sand Company marked the opening of a new compressed natural gas station, the first of its kind in Missouri, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 856 Wolverine Lane in Cape Girardeau.

Though designed to fuel the Jefferson City company’s fleet of trucks ferrying sand from its Millersville plant, it also features diesel pumps for commercial use.

“It’s always exciting seeing new construction popping up. It’s even more exciting when you know that that is a one-of-a-kind facility in the state, when you know its going to be a huge transportation connector and … a key economic development resource we can point to,” Lesley Rone, southeast regional manager at the Missouri Department of Economic Development, said at the event.

Built by the Chicago-based Ozinga Energy, the station includes four pumps for compressed natural gas, or CNG, and four diesel pumps for drivers traveling along Interstate 55 to use. It will be open 24/7.

Capital Sand chief operating officer David Herbst said the gas is the same kind used in home heating and barbecue grilling. Compressed natural gas can be captured from waste and is a renewable resource.

“This is the same gas, it’s natural gas. We just compress it to 4,200 psi (pounds per square inch), and we put it into a truck and the trucks run on it,” Herbst said.

Every truck is automatically filled with the natural gas, with the pump shutting off once a prescribed psi level is reached. The Cape Girardeau station took $6 million and one year to construct.

“As the plant grew, our trucking needs grew. We went from 10 day trucks to today … 45 trucks running two shifts a day, and we just got fully converted to using compressed natural gas,” Herbst said.

Capital Sand’s Millersville pit sends more than 3 million tons of sand upriver per year, heading along the Ohio River for use as proppant for fracking operations in the Northeast. It opened in 2014.

“Our sand is silica. It’s very pure, it’s very hard, it’s very round. This is the sand, for those of you who aren’t familiar with fracking, this is the sand that the energy industry puts down into the well hole to allow the oil and gas to keep flowing up top,” Herbst said.

Rone called the CNG more affordable and environmentally friendly than traditional diesel fuel. She said the Cape Girardeau station fills a previous gap in CNG service between St. Louis and Memphis and is one of the largest facilities of its kind in the Midwest.

“This CNG facility is just giving us another wonderful tool in the toolbox as we go out and ask these companies to come here and ask our existing companies to grow,” she said.