By Jon LeSage, via Yahoo Finance.

Bloomberg is attempting to make the case that Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk and cheap gasoline prices have driven natural gas away as an economically viable vehicle fuel. But that does not seem to be the case if you look at the role compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been playing on a global level.

Pickens is cited in the article for making the business case for natural gas vehicles going back to 2008 with the oil price spike and skyrocketing pump prices of gasoline and diesel. His arguments focused on the cheaper, stable price of natural gas and how it allowed the U.S. to free itself of oil imports, especially from OPEC.

As co-founder of the nation’s largest natural gas vehicle fueling infrastructure company, Clean Energy Fuels Corp., Pickens saw his company reach market valuation in 2012 of about $1.8 billion. The Bloomberg piece points to Clean Energy Fuels stock plummeting 90 percent since that peak as another sign that the alternative fuel is on a downturn.

Even if gasoline and diesel prices stay stable for a few years, and if Tesla and other electric vehicles see significant sales increases during that time, natural gas is expected to continue doing well for companies working in that sector.