Rick Stewart, a staff member on the Utah Standard-Examiner published an essay on the Pickens Plan which began this way:
It’s a pretty simple equation, according to T. Boone Pickens:
1) We’re spending too much of our money buying oil from people who don’t really like us.
2) We’re sitting on enough natural gas in this country to effectively let us stop buying oil from people who don’t really like us.
3) What the heck are we waiting for?
Stewart summarizes Boone’s position on drilling for more oil (he’s for it, but doesn’t think there is enough to replace Mid-East oil), on other forms of energy (he’s for “anything American”), and on America’s reserves of natural gas (“We have almost 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas”).
Stewart also does the calculations of how much we will be spending per year on imported oil if the price goes up to $300 per barrel – about $1.2 trillion per year.
“And it’s that volatility in oil prices that Pickens is trying to protect us from. How? Well, as you may have heard here, he has a plan. And the backbone of that plan is natural gas.”
As to the price of using natural gas as a transportation fuel, Stewart wrote:
“Although the price of natural gas may vary from state to state, the price of natural gas, equivalent to a gallon of gasoline, was 97 cents a gallon in Utah last week.”
He also points out that Utah’s senior Senator, Orrin Hatch (R) and the Senate Majority Leader Nevada’s Harry Reid (D) are supporters of the NAT GAS Act which Boone hopes will come to a vote in the House and Senate this Fall.
To read the entire essay in the Utah Standard-Examiner, click HERE.
— The Pickens Team