The following interview with T. Boone Pickens ran in the San Diego Union-Tribune on February 17, 2011.
Q: You famously made a prediction on CNBC in 2007 that oil would rise to $100 a barrel, which it did by Jan. 2008 — and then upward to over $145 per barrel before the global recession brought prices back down.
Now oil is creeping up again — any predictions this year?
A: I think it will be $100 a barrel by the end of the first quarter. The supply of oil is pretty close to being maxed out, and when that happens prices boom. If demand is greater than supply, the only way you can control demand is with price. So, you will see $100 a barrel in the first quarter, but where it goes from there — it could go right on up through $100 until you kill demand.
Q: If oil prices keep rising, how will that impact the world’s economic recovery and influence energy policy?
A: There is no question it will slow recovery. About 70 percent of all oil is used for transportation fuel, either diesel or gas, and that starts to impact a lot of businesses as far as the price of fuel. As to energy policy, America is the only country in the world without an energy plan, and we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. It’s not realistic to be in that kind of spot. Congress understands that finally, and I think we will have some kind of energy policy with this Congress.
Q: Does the U.S. government, and the American people, really have the will to make meaningful energy policy changes and choices? Events temporarily shake things up — the Gulf oil catastrophe, upheaval in Egypt — but it always seems to go back to business as usual.
A: It’s where your leadership takes you. I think the American people are ready for an energy policy. There is no question that people want to get off oil from countries that are not friendly to us, and some of them even hate us.
Q: What is the Obama administration doing right, and what is it doing wrong, in its energy policy?
A: They haven’t done anything. When the president accepted the nomination in ’08 he said that in 10 years we won’t import oil from the Middle East, but there has been no plan out of the White House to fulfill that promise. But I think maybe we are coming up on that now. We’ll see — we’re going to know in the next two or three months.
Q: You are one of the stranger creatures in the energy policy jungle, a conservative Republican and traditional oil guy who is often on the same page with “green” Democrats.
Ever feel politically schizophrenic?
A: This issue isn’t political. It’s totally nonpartisan, and I think that I’m viewed that way, too. If you don’t have an energy plan, then actually you do have a plan. Not having a plan makes burning oil your plan. That’s what you are going to get, more oil imports.
Q: How did you become a born-again alternative energy proponent?
A: This is all about America. I somehow felt that the mission had been given to me because I understood the issue. It is a security issue; you are funding both sides of the war. The money you pay for oil, some part of that goes to the Taliban.
Q: Critics claim that much of your alternative energy plan is self-serving, given that companies controlled by you — Mesa Power with its wind farm initiative and Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels, a natural gas fueling station company — stand to benefit hugely from private contracts and government subsidies.
A: I’ve invested in what I believe in. I’ve spent $82 million on trying to get an energy plan, and people know that is the case. If I’d set out to make money, probably the best thing I could do is not spend $82 million dollars.
Q: You are referring to the public mission to inform people, the ad campaigns, public forums, etc.?
A: Yes, last year I logged 609 hours and 38 town hall meetings, I’ve gone all over the U.S. working on this and informing people because I think it is so important for our country.
Q: You are the brains behind the Pampa Wind Project, the proposed world’s largest wind farm to be built in the Texas Panhandle. Since announced in 2007, the project has been hampered by transmission capacity problems and financing. What is the current status?
A: We have five wind projects — two I can’t reveal where they are because they are in a critical time in negotiation. But three of them I’m confident — not positive, but confident — will get done, and they are in Ontario, Canada. We are in the wind business. But we can’t do the Texas Panhandle project because they canceled transmission on it. It’s been scrapped. We spent $20 million on leases, and those leases have expired. Sure, it’s a disappointment, and someday it will be done, but it isn’t going to happen now.
Q: In 2008, you backed the failed California ballot initiative Proposition 10, a measure to put $5 billion toward renewable energy incentives that some critics charged unduly favored (Clean Energy Fuels’) customer base of natural gas vehicles. Since then, there has been a more intense focus on natural gas, so is there any plan to make another ballot run?
A: I’m not working on it. But I’m for anything American, an electric vehicle, natural gas, ethanol. I just want off that OPEC oil.
Q: There have been a lot of environmental safety and health concerns raised about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to get at deep natural gas reserves, most recently in the documentary “Gasland.” What is your take on the issue?
A: The industry has a long history of safe operations and there is no evidence that fracking has damaged aquifers.
Q: Natural gas is a relatively inexpensive domestic resource, but like most alternative energies, there isn’t the infrastructure to make it widely accepted as an alternative to diesel. What’s it going to take, and at what cost?
A: I don’t want the government to pay for any infrastructure for fueling. I’d like to see the truckers get some help on the incremental difference between the cost of the truck to go from diesel to natural gas. Southern California has done so much in this area, where it has been an air quality issue. One diesel trash truck off the road is equivalent to 325 cars in terms of emissions.
No one can argue with natural gas because you are going to use a domestic fuel that is cheaper, cleaner and abundant, and we are going to look like fools if we don’t take advantage of what we have here.
I’m not pressing for your car — that will happen in time. Just keep moving on the heavy-duty vehicles, the 8 million 18-wheelers that are out there. Once we move those 8 million vehicles to natural gas, we cut OPEC in half.
Q: You were in Washington, D.C., lobbying for that?
A: I want to get something to give the truckers help. In California, we are already doing that, like the Port of Los Angeles. They are switching from diesel trucks to natural gas.
Q: Other than natural gas and wind power, what other alternative energy sources intrigue you? For example, a lot of San Diego companies are investing in algae for fuel.
A: I love it. I do. I don’t have any money in it — I’ve run out of money. But if you can get algae to work, great. I think Exxon has a big algae project. As long as it’s American, that’s what I want.
Q: Some scientists paint a rather bleak picture of our energy future, that it is a case of too little, too late. Even if we started building every wind, solar, algae and natural gas facility we could, it won’t keep pace with the demand from the U.S. and emerging powerhouse economies such as China and India. What do you think?
A: Hell, so let’s just give up then. But I’m not going to do that. We can solve the problem. It will take us a little while to get there, but you have to start somewhere.
The best time to have planted a tree was 20 years ago, but just in case you didn’t plant it, today is the next best time.
We need our leadership to explain it, and that hasn’t been done. But this president has the opportunity to be the first president in the history of our country to reduce dependency on foreign oil.
Q: If you hadn’t become a multibillionaire oil tycoon and hedge fund operator, what would you have liked to be?
A: I’d have liked to have been a professional basketball player. I wasn’t good enough to make the college team, but that is what I’d like to do.
Read the entire article HERE.