Published: December 03, 2008 11:40 am            

Pickens: Be aggressive in domestic energy pursuit

By Carol Cole-Frowe

CNHI News Service



OKLAHOMA CITY - T. Boone Pickens says the United States could reduce its energy dependence on foreign oil by 38 percent if it would pursue an aggressive program to increase use of American-based resources like wind and natural gas.

“The solution is very straightforward,” the billionaire oilman told a gathering Tuesday. “Use your own resources.”

Pickens, 80, told about 1,100 attendees at the overflowing “Revolution: Oklahoma Wind Energy Conference” that the United States imports about 70 percent of the oil it uses daily from foreign sources, up from 24 percent in 1970 and 42 percent in 1990. The cost is almost $700 billion annually.

“Who do you blame that we’re importing 70 percent of our oil?” Pickens asked. “It’s all of us.”

Global consumption of oil is 85 million barrels per day. The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population but uses 21 million barrels daily.

About half that comes from Canada and the North Sea, with whom Pickens has no problem. What he objects to is the 38 percent that comes from the Middle East and Africa.

“I like importing oil from our friends and not from our enemies,” he said. “Get off the foreign oil that comes from the wrong places.”

And because Oklahoma is in the heart of the nation’s wind corridor, he said the state could be a top resource for wind energy.

Pickens gave the example of Sweetwater, Texas, which was an oil-producing area that declined. Now Sweetwater is producing 3,000 megawatts of wind power, about 25 percent of the jobs in Sweetwater come from the wind industry and the town is now booming.

He said he has high hopes that U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will have the first national energy plan in four decades, and that it will include developing the country’s renewable resources like wind and solar.

“I think (Obama) understands the problem,” Pickens said. Obama has said he wants his energy plan to make the U.S. energy independent in 10 years.

Pickens said failure to act would result in 10 years in the U.S. still importing 70 percent of its oil needs from foreign sources, but he predicted that oil would be $300 a barrel.

He said of the possible sources of energy like coal, natural gas, hydro, bio, nuclear, solar and wind, only natural gas and wind would do what is necessary to reduce the foreign oil dependence.

“We can do a great deal in three to five years,” Pickens said.

He said coal supplies about 50 percent of America’s power generation needs, with 22 percent coming from natural gas and 20 percent from nuclear.

He said wind could replace natural gas in the equation and that natural gas could be freed up to power the country’s heavy duty truck fleets. He said nuclear would take too long to get up and running.

“That’s where you’re going to get big volumes,” Pickens said.

He said there is interest in changing over the semi trucks from the No. 1 trucking firm Swift Trucking, which buys 23 new semis daily. Wal-Mart also has shown interest.

Pickens said he’s not suggesting people give up their cars, but that American citizens would change over to natural gas “because we’re patriotic.”

“This thing’s got to go and it’s got to go quick,” he said.

Pickens urged the crowd to go to his Web site at www.pickensplan.com and sign up to join the Pickens Plan Army’s 1 million supporters of the creation of a new energy plan within the first 100 days of Obama’s administration.

He said when politicians say they support energy independence, his supporters should get up and blow a whistle.

“No one ever holds them to it,” he said.

He said he’s a lot more effective in Washington, D.C., with his legions of supporters than going to Washington as “a rich guy from Oklahoma.”

“That gets me nothing,” he said.

He said because he’s 80 years old, he is offloading the responsibility of moving the agenda forward to the next generation.

“I’m not the generation to solve it. I may be the generation to lay it out,” Pickens said. “We’re going to solve the problem and we’re going to do it together.”



Carol Cole-Frowe writes for The Norman Transcript.

        

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