The following op-ed by T. Boone Pickens ran in the Detroit Free Press Friday, July 9:

Congress is faced with the very real issue of what to do about an energy plan. Two years ago, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged to end our dependence on Middle East oil in ten years.

We have eight years to go. We have to ask the question: Are we making any progress?

Washington likes to point to wind, solar and nuclear as key elements of a new “green” economy. They are all good and all American, but they miss a critical point – they do nothing to fulfill the no-OPEC oil pledge. Two thirds of our imported oil problem is directly related to transportation, and the only way to achieve the goal is to replace its dirty foreign fuel with clean, abundant, domestic fuels such as natural gas.

I met late last month with Ford and GM officials. They are ready to lead if Washington delivers true energy policy.

Solar and wind, nuclear and geothermal, and any other kind of alternative energy is an important part of the energy independence conversation. But the reality is that heavy-duty trucks – the 18-wheelers that travel our interstate highways delivering goods from coast to coast – will realistically run on only two fuels: imported diesel or domestic natural gas.

There are more than 11 million natural gas vehicles (NGVs) in the world. Of those, only about 130,000 are on the roads here in the United States.

I mention this to make the point that NGVs are an effective, proven technology available now.

Heavy-duty trucks use approximately one-third of the oil we import as a transportation fuel. These are vehicles that generally run the same routes on a regular schedule. Drivers tend to use the same truck stops to eat, rest and re-fuel. It would be a relatively simple matter to install natural gas refueling facilities at truck stops along the major cross-country routes.

That gets us away from the principal argument against NGVs – that the U.S. lacks refueling infrastructure. Lawmakers across the nation are taking notice of how soon we can begin to move our heavy-duty fleet from imported diesel to cleaner domestic resources.

Congress has bipartisan legislation before it – the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1835 & S. 1408) – that would provide tax incentives for building additional refueling infrastructure and for using domestic natural gas instead of imported diesel to fuel our fleet of eight million heavy-duty trucks. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently added another layer of bipartisan support for the increased use of natural gas as a transportation fuel, issuing a resolution calling for the enactment of the NAT GAS Act.

We need a transition fuel to get us from where we are today – spending more than a billion dollars a day to import oil – to where we want to be: if not energy independent, at least independent from OPEC oil. We’ve got the resources to make it happen – American natural gas.

On a barrels of oil-equivalency basis, we have more than twice as much domestic natural gas as Saudi Arabia has oil. According to a number of expert reports, we have enough natural gas to last for 100 years or more. By that time, no doubt, we will have long since been using new technology such as hydrogen fuel cells for heavy vehicles and batteries for passenger cars and light trucks, or perhaps a technology that hasn’t even been discovered yet.

For years, Ford, GM and other manufacturers across the globe have been producing vehicles capable of running on natural gas. They know how to do it, and they are good at it. If we can jump-start an NGV program, we can create new, permanent, high-paying jobs all along the value chain from machine tools to maintenance facilities and every point in between.

The U.S. is in a heated economic battle with major overseas players. Automobiles that used to be made in the United States and Europe now are – or will soon be – manufactured in China and India.

We need to carve out a segment of the transportation industry that will be uniquely American. That segment is heavy-duty trucks running on domestic natural gas. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner than imported diesel, and it is available right here, right now.

Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow will be called upon to pass an energy bill in the coming weeks. This is their chance to do something good for America and specifically good for Michigan.

Detroit has given us generations of American cars we’re proud to drive. Detroit and natural gas can power America’s heavy-duty truck fleet for the foreseeable future.

T. Boone Pickens previously built and ran Mesa Petroleum. His current focus is on natural gas and alternative energy. More information is available at www.pickensplan.com.