Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has added fuel to the effort to have Congress adopt elements of the Pickens Plan in the energy legislation announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week.

According to Reuters, “Chavez threatened on Sunday to cut oil supplies to the United States in case of a military attack from Colombia as a dispute escalated over charges his country harbors Colombian rebels.”

Reuters quoted Chavez as proclaiming:

“If there was any armed aggression against Venezuela from Colombian territory or from anywhere else, promoted by the Yankee empire, we would suspend oil shipments to the United States, even if we have to eat stones here.”

Venezuela, which is a member of OPEC, is the fifth largest supplier of foreign oil to the United States behind Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

T. Boone Pickens, the founder of the Pickens Plan, has warned that our dependence on OPEC oil is a national security issue. Overall, OPEC countries supply five million barrels of oil per day – about a quarter of our daily needs.

According to Reuters, Chavez is a “close ally of Cuban President Fidel Castro” and “gets more than 90 percent of its export income from oil sales, mostly to the United States.”

The economic consequences to Venezuela which would follow a strict embargo against shipping its oil to the United States would be devastating, nevertheless Reuters reported that

“Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, speaking from Cuba, said the oil industry was on ‘yellow alert’ and prepared to follow Chavez’s orders.”

Pickens has consistently held that we need to substitute domestic natural gas for imported oil especially as a transportation fuel for heavy-duty trucks. Pickens, in his recent Whiteboard presentation, points out we can reduce our reliance on OPEC oil by 50 percent within seven years by changing over America’s eight-million 18-wheelers to run on domestic natural gas.

By jump starting a natural gas vehicle industry in the U.S., Americans could choose which fuel they prefer for their passenger cars, light trucks, and SUVs while the over-the-road truck fleet was being exchanged. In that way American could be completely free of OPEC oil – including Venezuela – in eight years.

— The Pickens Team