T. Boone Pickens offered the following comment on President Obama’s remarks today advocating more offshore drilling:
“President Obama’s plan to promote more offshore drilling for oil and natural gas is an important step in achieving true energy reform. We should be taking full advantage of every available American resource to help decrease our crippling dependency on foreign oil—a dependency that is slowing our economic recovery and jeopardizing our homeland security.
“Even if the estimates of the reserves are correct, we are 10 years away from being able to use them. It’s imperative that we promote other immediately available domestic alternatives to solve the national security crisis created by foreign oil dependency.
“Transportation has to lead the way – it accounts for two-thirds of our oil imports. No energy strategy can be effective unless it promotes the use of domestic natural gas as a transportation fuel alternative to foreign oil/diesel, and the focus has to be on America’s eight million heavy duty vehicles. The NAT GAS Act, a bipartisan bill proposed in both sides of Congress, would advance the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel.”