Americans are finally waking up to ending our addiction to foreign oil.
I think it’s becoming clear to Americans, clearer every day, that our continued over reliance on foreign oil is not just an environmental but an economic disaster to the country. People appreciate that while we will have great sources of renewable fuel down the road, but we need something now. And what is available now and what we have discovered a great deal of domestically in the United States is natural gas.

Just a few years ago it appeared that we were running out of natural gas.
We are fortunate by virtue of geology and science and technology to have the ability now to access natural gas from shale deposits that in the past were economically off limits. I think it’s a tremendous opportunity. But we have to be smart enough to take advantage of that opportunity, to allow the shale to be developed in a way that we access that natural gas and then to put in place policies that encourage using that natural gas, not to burn it in power plants but to use it to replace oil.

That’s a story a lot of people now know, including New Yorkers.
One of the most exciting natural gas discoveries is in the Marcellus Shale, which is largely in the Northeast – Pennsylvania and New York – and creates a tremendous opportunity for economic growth plus the creation of a clean domestic source of natural gas.

You mentioned the environment.
Absolutely. We’re all concerned about our jobs in today’s economy, but we also have to be intelligent about our environment going forward. If we can replace dirty fuels with clean fuels like natural gas, we win on both fronts. It’s a domestic source. It helps our economy. And it is a very clean burning fuel. When we replace dirtier fuels with it, we will have cleaner air and less health problems.

So to me it’s quite clear that as Boone Pickens has been advocating we use it as an interim transition for heavy vehicles instead of using diesel fuel that pollutes and comes from foreign sources, natural gas makes tremendous sense.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED, AND EDITED BY ERIC O’KEEFE