the late 50s and a traditionally high retail price for petrol. As of April 2012 there were about 1500 filling stations, spread on the entire country except for the island of Sardinia, while the fleet reached 730,000 CNG vehicles at the end of 2010. Ukraine Ukraine's first compressed natural gas refueling station (CNGS) was commissioned in 1937. Today, there is a well-developed CNGS network across the country. Many buses were converted to run on CNG during the 1990s, primarily for economic reasons. The retrofitted cylinders are often visible atop the vehicle's roof and/or underneath the body. Despite their age, these buses remain in service and continue to provide reliable public transport combined with the environmental benefits of CNG. United Kingdom CNG buses are beginning to be used in the UK, e.g. by Reading Buses and Nottingham City Transport. The latter company purchased 53 double-decker gas buses between 2017 and 2018, earning them the world record for the largest fleet of CNG buses in the world. In 2019, Nottingham City Transport purchased a further 67 CNG buses. North America With the recent increase in natural gas production due to widespread use of fracking technology, many countries, including the United States and Canada, can now be self-sufficient. Canada is a substantial net exporter of natural gas, though the United States still has a net import of natural gas. Natural gas prices have decreased dramatically in the past few years and are likely to decrease further as additional production comes on line. However, the EIA predicts that natural gas prices will start increasing in a few years as the most profitable natural gas reserves are used up. Natural gas prices have decreased from US in 2008 to in 2012. It is likely therefore that natural gas-powered vehicles will be increasingly cheaper to run relative to gasoline-powered vehicles. The issue is how to finance the purchase and installation of conversion kits. Some support may be available through the Department of Energy. Private initiatives, which essentially lease the conversion equipment in exchange for slightly higher natural gas refueling, can be self-financing and offer considerable advantages to liquidity-strapped consumers. Canada Natural Gas has been used as a motor fuel in Canada for over 20 years. With assistance from federal and provincial research programs, demonstration projects, and NGV market deployment programs during the 1980s and 1990s, the population of light-duty NGVs grew to over 35,000 by the