Ohio Helping to Chart Nation’s Energy Path

The following op-ed by T. Boone Pickens ran in The Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday, February 5, 2014.

Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama made a renewed call for further development and utilization of natural gas. Here in Ohio, on the edges of both the Utica and Marcellus shale plays, natural gas has become an important economic driver.

Until 2009, natural gas was considered a limited resource. Then new drilling techniques began to offer the promise of recovering enormous amounts of natural-gas deposits contained in shale under the continental United States at an economically viable price.

A drive down the Ohio River Valley, through Jefferson, Monroe, Noble and Washington counties demonstrates how shale gas already has had a positive economic effect on towns along the way.

Ohio has a long history in the oil and gas industry. The first oil boom began in Titusville, Pa., in 1859 and went through Marietta, Ohio, before it spread west to Oklahoma and Texas.

Let’s use the American energy renaissance to our advantage. The worst thing we can do is be lulled into a sense of security and think the national-security and economic threats posed by our reliance on OPEC oil have been solved.

Gov. John Kasich and his peers across the nation can have a major impact on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Even with the increased production of gas and oil — which the president highlighted last week — America still imports about 40 percent of the oil we use from OPEC. The annual transfer of wealth to Middle Eastern governments is in the area of $130 billion.

Most of the chatter on the cable shows and out of Washington misrepresent the use of fossil fuels. They correctly talk about wind and solar to replace coal as fuels to generate electricity. I’ve been saying since I started the Pickens Plan in 2008 that I’m for everything American, and wind and solar have a promising future, but it’s misleading to say they help to reduce our dependence on OPEC oil. That’s just wrong. Only about 1 percent of our electricity is produced from oil.

The only way to bring down that $130 billion OPEC price tag is by looking for a transportation fuel that will replace OPEC oil. That fuel is natural gas. Despite the stunning resurgence in domestic oil production, gasoline prices in the U.S. remain largely unchanged. That’s because OPEC — a cartel we protect with our military — still largely controls world oil prices. The logical way to combat that is to inject serious competition into the transportation-fuel mix. Let’s start with domestic natural gas.

We may see natural-gas fueling stations in neighborhoods, but before we get to that point, we can immediately move from imported diesel to domestic natural gas by focusing on heavy trucks. We have about 8 million heavy-duty trucks in America; everything from refuse and recycling trucks that move at walking speed through neighborhoods to the 18-wheelers that run the long-haul routes on our interstate highways . These trucks tend to run the same routes on a regular schedule, so building out refueling facilities along the interstate highway system is a relatively simple logistical process.

Ohio is uniquely involved in the process of migrating from Middle Eastern oil to domestic natural gas. Not only is Ohio a natural-gas producer, it is a major player in over-the-road truck traffic moving goods from West Coast ports to markets in the East.

By moving quickly toward making natural gas the standard fuel for heavy trucks, Ohio is helping to lower our dependence on OPEC oil. At the same time, Ohio is helping to improve the standard of living in areas where drilling is taking place and, along with other states, improving our environment, because natural gas is far cleaner than diesel.

Ohio has helped lead the way, but more can be done. For example, Ohio is looking at changing the weight rules to allow heavy-duty trucks powered by liquefied natural gas to carry the heavier fuel tank necessary. If Ohio allows LNG-powered trucks to have a higher fuel limit, those trucks will be able to carry the same amount of cargo as a diesel-powered truck with far less environmental impact.

Obama endorsed natural gas in heavy-duty trucks in his State of the Union speech last week. He also called for a year of action. Ohio is acting, and leading. Let’s keep the momentum going. Just like the original oil boom, it looks like the next generation of America’s energy future begins here.