Pickens: Americans ready for strong energy policy

06/09/2009

By ALAN SAYRE / Associated Press


After recurring energy crises over four decades, Americans concerned about national security are ready for the United States to adopt a strong policy that will wean the country off imported oil, investor T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday.

Addressing the Southern Growth Policies Board energy conference, Pickens said that if the U.S. continues to spend trillions of dollars on imported oil over the next decade, little else can be accomplished.

The veteran energy investor, who is pushing a grass-roots campaign announced in June 2008, said he expected foreign oil at the current U.S. rate of consumption to eventually reach $300 per barrel.

"If we go another 10 years without an energy plan, you will not have health care or education," Pickens said. "You will be busted."

Pickens' plan calls for development of wind-generated power so that source will provide 20 percent of U.S. electric demand by 2013. At the same time, he wants to see heavy-duty vehicles converted from diesel fuel to natural gas.

The combination alone will turn the tide on U.S. oil imports, which have grown from 24 percent of domestic usage at the time of the 1970s Arab oil embargo to 68 percent today, Pickens said.

Over the past year, owing to shale gas finds in the U.S., actual and projected gas supplies have skyrocketed. Pickens said that by converting 350,000 vehicles to natural gas, foreign oil consumption would be cut by 5 percent.

There are 10 million gas-fired vehicles in the world — some made by U.S. automakers — but only 142,000 are in the United States, Pickens said.

"The technology is there," Pickens said. "Don't worry about the infrastructure. Build the equipment and it will come."

Pickens said wind and solar generation will provide an increasing backup to peak power generated by such traditional source as coal and natural gas.

"You're going to use resources in America," Pickens said. "The idea is getting away from foreign oil."

Pickens said he wanted to use any domestic energy resource available in a national plan. "I'm for anything American. I'm against foreign oil."

Pickens, who said he has put $60 million into the campaign, said he believes the U.S. will have a workable energy policy sometime this year despite repeated talk since the 1970s.

"We've never been tasked before to have an energy policy because we've had cheap oil," he said.


Buck