OUR OPINION: Pickens cooking with natural gas



Texas oilman and entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens wouldn’t be spending millions of dollars promoting an energy plan if it weren’t likely to benefit him. That doesn’t mean his push to greatly increase the use of natural gas to power vehicles is a bad idea, though.

In fact, it makes great sense — if he can manage to change the way politicians and motorists think about they way vehicles are fueled and then create a system for delivering what they need, hardly a simple task.

Pickens didn’t become wealthy keeping his head in the clouds, so he proposes a bite-size approach. He is asking Congress to pass legislation funding a pilot program to switch 350,000 large trucks from diesel to natural gas.

The obstacles are significant. One is the cost — $75,000 per vehicle. Another is not enough fueling stations exist — only about 1,500 in the entire country, compared to about 200,000 gasoline stations, although the legislation would offer tax incentives that presumably increase the number of refueling places.

On the other hand, the potential payoff is enormous. Pickens says switching just those 350,000 trucks to natural gas would reduce foreign oil imports by more than 5 percent. Also, natural gas burns 50 percent cleaner than oil.

Put those facts together and, if the nation could move far enough in that direction, we would make a big dent in two long-standing concerns: overdependence on foreign oil and climate damage. Another benefit is jobs — about 455,000 just in the heavy-duty truck conversion program, by Pickens’ calculations. Too, while natural gas vehicles cost more, they are more cost-efficient over time.

Like oil, natural gas is finite and thus not a permanent solution, but there’s a big enough supply that no one living today would have to worry about it disappearing. Pickens estimates there’s at least a 100-year supply, and much of it is in the United States.

And much of that is in Texas, which began well over a decade ago converting state-owned vehicles to natural gas and now has a program encouraging cities, counties and other entities to run their fleets on natural gas.

The Texas General Land Office has a $5 million grant program to encourage cities to make the switch with their garbage trucks and street sweepers. The city of Dallas has more than 1,200 natural gas vehicles. San Antonio’s riverboats have changed to natural gas.

Pickens’ proposal is expensive — he asked Congress for $28 billion — but it has a sizable payoff. It’s one of the simplest ways to reduce toxic emissions, and it can set the pace for a broader conversion that would greatly reduce reliance on imported oil. Pickens has a lot of ducks to line up. We wish him well.


Buck