T. Boone Pickens covered a wide range of topics in a recent interview with the Texas Tribune, including the Pickens Plan and the political landscape in Washington, D.C. While addressing America’s energy future, the lifelong energy executive singled out a few of the many ways that domestic natural gas reserves have changed the way the U.S. will power its future:
Wind and natural gas were the two founding legs of the Pickens Plan, a plan to move the country off of foreign oil that he launched with much fanfare two years ago. The wind component — the vision of moving the country to 20 percent wind power by 2030 — clearly is struggling. So Pickens spends much of his time on natural gas, which he thinks should be used far more extensively in vehicles to move the country off of foreign oil. (Large shale-gas reserves, including the Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth area, can be accessed with new technology, and have recently boosted U.S. supply estimates.)
Abundant supplies of clean-burning natural gas have also made it the preferred energy of choice for an increasing number of power projects, and its appeal is curtailing demand for other energy sources:
A growing chorus of environmentalists sees the oil spill as a chance to motivate the country to move off of oil and toward renewable sources of energy, like wind power. Pickens notes that wind — which feeds the electricity grid, not our cars, not to mention the fact that it doesn’t blow all the time — is not a straight substitute for oil. Wind also has another big problem right now, Pickens said: low natural gas prices, which essentially dictate how much other forms of electricity, like wind, can be sold for. “When natural gas is $4.50 [per thousand cubic feet], it’s hard to finance a wind deal. Natural gas has got to be $6,” Pickens said.
Read the entire interview HERE as well as listen to audio clips of Pickens himself.