T. Boone Pickens told the House Ways and Means Committee today that the U.S. has five times more natural gas than the Saudi Arabia has oil but cautioned that history would not be kind to America if it overlooked this opportunity, saying the country would be considered the dumbest ever if it doesn’t make the most of this resource.
“Study after study shows we are awash in natural gas,” the energy executive told the committee in testimony Wednesday afternoon.
Pickens addressed skeptics who say there are no filling stations for natural gas. “If Henry Ford had decided not to build the Model T based upon the availability of gas stations, where would be today?” he said. “Filling is easy. The resource is the hard part, and we have the resource.” He added, “The worst thing you can do is to tax the domestic oil industry. Tax foreign oil instead.”
In other testimony, Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs said, “We have absolutley no energy plan. We have one hundred good ideas and no plan.” He added, “There are lots of choices but only a few that count: large scale solar, wind nuclear, natural gas, EVs and grid flexibility.”
Joseph Romm at the Center for American Progress was even harsher: “Our energy policy is a Ponzi scheme”