A new essay by T. Boone Pickens has been published in the New Haven (Connecticut) Register under the title: Running heavy trucks on natural gas lowers reliance on OPEC
The op-ed was published in conjunction with a lecture Boone presented at Yale University which is the kick-off of a new multi-campus college tour.
In his op-ed Boone looks the folly of refusing to use wheat and corn grown in the American Midwest and, instead, forcing the U.S. to import food “from places such as Russia, China and Pakistan, three of the top wheat producers in the world.”
He compares that fictional policy with the real policy of refusing to use domestic natural gas to fuel America’s heavy truck fleet instead of importing oil to make diesel fuel from OPEC.
Boone points out that 40 percent of all our oil imports come from OPEC nations. But, if you remove our two largest oil trading partners – Canada and Mexico – then we rely on OPEC for 65 percent of our imports.
Boone reminds his readers that the discussion of energy from government leaders is confusing because it mixes power generation with transportation fuels. Oil is not a big player in generating electricity
We generate about 20 percent of our electricity from nuclear plants. Coal fuels about 50 percent of our power plants, natural gas about 23 percent and hydro and renewable sources contributing about 10 percent. Oil contributes only about 1 percent of the fuel for our electricity supply.
When it comes to importing oil, Boone writes:
About half the oil we import is used by the heavy trucks. Batteries won’t push an 18-wheeler. Neither will ethanol. The only substitute for imported diesel fuel to power our truck fleet is natural gas. We have more than a 100-year supply of that.
Oil has risen from about $80 per barrel to $105 per barrel – a 23.5 percent increase – since the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa began just a few months ago. He warns of the dangers of being at the mercy of that troubled region for our major means of transporting goods and services.
In February alone, we imported 302 million barrels of oil at a cost of $31.3 billion – more than $1 billion a day. If we import 40 percent from OPEC, we provided $12.5 billion to the Saudis, Libya, Venezuela and other unstable or unfriendly governments.
Boone concludes with the apparently straightforward solution:
If we swap out our diesel heavy truck fleet using imported fuel for trucks running on domestic natural gas, we could cut our dependence on OPEC oil by 50 percent in about seven years.
To read the entire essay in the New Haven Register, click HERE.
— The Pickens Team