Earlier this week, T. Boone Pickens sat down with Alabama’s oldest newspaper and discussed topics ranging from the Pickens Plan to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Here are excerpts from that conversation:

Q: Has the Gulf oil spill energized advocates of your plan?

A: Yes. But you don’t hear me up there trying to take advantage of a disaster. I haven’t done that. But no question that more people have focused on natural gas on the continental United States as a solution, rather than finding more oil.

At the same time, I’m ready to find more oil. The Gulf spill was a disaster, but it was the first blowout we’ve had in 50 years in the United States. The industry’s record is pretty damn good.

Q: In terms of the natural gas aspect of your plan, what role will the Gulf Coast play? There has been resistance here to liquefied natural gas terminals. Can the delivery systems in place now enable natural gas to become a transportation fuel?

A: Oh, sure. The Gulf is producing 6 billion cubic feet. I well remember when the Gulf was producing 13 billion for a long time. So you’re half of what I remember as the high-water mark, but you now have discovered all this gas onshore in the shale. We’ve got in this country the equivalent of two or three times what the Saudis do in barrels of oil equivalent. I don’t think anybody has fully understood or appreciated what we have there. It’s cleaner, it’s cheaper and it’s ours. If this thing was properly managed from a government standpoint, we could really help ourselves.

Q: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus says he’s leaning toward projects in his Gulf restoration plan that move us away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. What renewable energy future do you envision for the Gulf Coast?

A: Let’s go out 30 or 40 years. The renewables have to be big in that picture. There’s a lot of things to do with renewables. We’ve got to get much more efficient. So the natural gas you have in the United States will be the bridge fuel to the ultimate transportation fuel. I think that’s the way it’s going to work. And I think we have enough gas to accomplish that.

I see the Gulf Coast probably not much different than the rest of the United States. I see it as not one in the same but all one together. The renewables will be developed on the Gulf Coast just like they will in Arizona or Montana or someplace else. It’s just an overall understanding of what the requirements will be and what the resources are and fit them together and manage it. We don’t have that. That’s not the way we’re set up.

Q: Why not?

A: We don’t see the total energy picture. It’s a fragmented story and you focus on one thing. You say, ‘Well, solar’s too expensive so we can’t do that.’ Well, wait a minute. Solar may be too expensive but there’s no question it’s renewable. How much is renewable worth? It’s worth a lot. How much are you going to pay for something that’s renewable? Well, figure out how much you can pay. If you look at who’s the most widely developed for wind, it’s Germany. Why? Because they don’t want to be dependent on Russia for natural gas. They’ll take gas from Russia, but they don’t want to do what we’ve done. Here we are dependent on foreign sources for 67 percent of our oil.

Q: About a month after you released your plan, soon-to-be President Barack Obama pledged in his nomination speech in Denver to try to eliminate Middle Eastern oil imports by 2018. What should his first step be?

A: By executive order, he should say all federal vehicles in the future will have to use domestic fuel. When we’re talking about cutting down on oil from OPEC, what resources do you have to do it? You can’t attack that problem with wind. You have to do it with natural gas. You have an abundance of natural gas, and it’s cheap. An opportunity that America cannot pass up is to switch. And it’s 30 percent cleaner. So you have an opportunity to go clean, cheap and domestic and take out expensive, dirty, foreign. Anybody that can think has to be able to see that.

Read the entire article HERE.