Pickens touts gas proposal

He’s a Republican who made billions in oil.

Now T. Boone Pickens is stumping for natural gas and wind energy and praising the Democratic president-in-waiting.

At a national conference of state legislators in Atlanta on Saturday, Pickens spent 45 minutes detailing his plan to wean America off foreign oil. He wove stories around hard numbers, and he sprinkled the message with generous doses of homespun charm and unabashed name dropping.

“[Alaska Gov.] Sarah Palin and I got into a long discussion of this,” Pickens began one story meant to illustrate the nation’s abundance of natural gas.

In a nutshell, the Pickens Plan would shift domestic natural gas from electricity production over to transportation fuel, reducing U.S. need for foreign oil by more than one-third. The first vehicles he wants to fuel with natural gas are long-haul trucks, because “a battery isn’t going to move an 18-wheeler,” Pickens said.

Compared with oil, natural gas is “cheaper, it’s cleaner, it’s abundant and it’s ours,” he said.

Pickens, who predicts a barrel of oil will one day cost $200 to $300 (it’s under $50 today), would replace the lost electric production with wind power, generated by an army of turbines stretching from Texas to Canada. But he’s also said the United States has “plenty” of natural gas to do both jobs: power homes and businesses, and fuel vehicles.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Georgia could potentially supply 20 percent to 50 percent of its electric needs from wind through turbines built off the coast.

WHERE DOES THE U.S. GET ITS OIL?

In 2007, the U.S. imported 58 percent of its petroleum, which includes crude oil and petroleum products such as gasoline. The top five exporters to the U.S. are:

Canada ……..19 percent

Saudi Arabia ..12 percent

Venezuela……11 percent

Mexico ……..10 percent

Nigeria ……..9 percent

*Percentage is based on net imports of petroleum to the U.S.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration