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Q&A with T. Boone Pickens
By Jim Snyder
Posted: 07/21/08 06:29 PM [ET]
T. Boone Pickens made a name for himself, and a few billion dollars, as an oilman and corporate raider. These days he has a new mission: promoting the “Pickens Plan .”
By improving the nation’s electric transmission system, vast wind resources from the Dakotas to Texas could be tapped to power population centers hundreds of miles away, according to Pickens. The natural gas that once went to electric utilities could instead be used as a transportation fuel.
Because natural gas is cleaner than gasoline and wind doesn’t pollute at all, the Pickens Plan has attracted advocates like Sierra Club President Carl Pope and former Vice President Al Gore.
Pickens, a Republican fundraiser, welcomes the support, but his main motivation is keeping $700 billion that would otherwise go to purchasing foreign oil in the United States: “I’ve got one enemy. I’ve got one rifle. I’ve got one crosshairs. And it’s focused on one spot.”
An interview with Business & Lobbying Editor Jim Snyder begins with Pickens explaining when he started thinking about his plan.
I actually believed you could do this in 1988. Twenty years ago. That’s when I was CEO of the company Mesa Petroleum. One [million cubic feet] of natural gas equals eight gallons of gasoline. I thought that if I can get to $5 or $6 for natural gas, I could save my a--. Because at that point we had distributed a lot of money to our shareholders believing the price of natural gas was going to go up. And I borrowed money to do that, and my back was against the wall. And I thought that if I could get this over to a transportation fuel, where it should be, because its 80 percent cleaner than gas and diesel, and was cheaper, and it was domestic … I’d get up in front of a crowd and say, “This fuel is cheaper, it’s cleaner, it’s domestic.” You know what the first question I’d get? “How much cheaper?” They didn’t give a damn whether it was cleaner or domestic 20 years ago. It didn’t have anything to do with it. … It was really hard for me to sell. …
And Gazprom [Russia’s state-controlled gas company] last week announced that they are going to put natural gas fueling stations all over Europe. What does that tell you? Yeah, it’s a good idea, I think. Not that the Russians need to show me a good idea, but it does confirm what you knew.
Natural gas is being used as a transportation fuel now. Eight million vehicles in the world today are on natural gas. Only 142,000 of those are in the United States. What’s that tell you? It will all happen if you promote the use of the fuel. If President Bush had promoted natural gas like he did ethanol, a lot of things would have happened by now.
Full article:
http://thehill.com/business--lobby/qa-with-t.-boone-pickens-2008-07-21.html
Boone will be testifying in front of Congress live on C-SPAN 3 tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM eastern.....