Industry milestones & announcements.

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA and OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA — Feb. 21, 2012 — 3M (NYSE:MMM) and Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK) today announced an agreement to collaborate in designing, manufacturing, and marketing a broad portfolio of compressed natural gas (CNG) tanks for use in all sectors of the United States transportation market.

Currently the fuel tank on a CNG vehicle is its most expensive single component. The new CNG tanks developed through the 3M and Chesapeake partnership will reduce costs while increasing performance. Less expensive tanks will enable greater market adoption of CNG as an alternative automotive fuel source.

3M's CNG tank solution combines the company's proprietary liner advancements, thermoplastic materials, barrier films and coatings, and damage-resistant films to transform the CNG tank from an expensive, heavy iron cylinder to a lighter, more affordable composite structure — leveraging HyPerComp Engineering's composite pressure vessel expertise in the development process.

"We expect this partnership to significantly advance the commercialization of CNG vehicles," said Lindsay McIntyre, Chesapeake Energy.

NASA granted HyPerComp Engineering Inc. exclusive licensing rights for its ballistic-survivable "Robust" pressure vessel technology — a breakthrough in composite pressure vessel safety engineering.

The technology, developed in collaboration with NASA, demonstrates the ability of a composite pressure vessel to survive the impact of a .50-caliber bullet round at 4,500 psi without catastrophic failure. This "benign-failure-mode" capability greatly reduces the likelihood of injury or death from catastrophic pressure vessel failures.

The decreased risk of injury due to fragmentation, explosion, and "sympathetic detonation" of highly pressurized storage cylinders is of great potential benefit for the military across the board — from UAV fuel systems to SCBA first-responder equipment.