Rich Karlgaard blogged on the Forbes.com site that he had interviewed T. Boone Pickens over four nights recently in front of live audiences. Karlgaard wrote there was “an underlying tension of Boone “trying to convince earnest San Francisco Bay Area liberals about the virtues of natural gas. How did Pickens do in front of liberal, vaguely hostile audiences? Surprisingly well.”

Karlgaard said Boone “made his case with numbers.”

– Global demand for oil is 86-88 million barrels per day. It will be 90 million by the end of the year, due to global growth.

– Global production is 84 million barrels per day. Since production falls short of demand, prices have risen.

– America consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. We produce 7 million barrels domestically and import the other 13 million barrels. Of the 13 million barrels of imported oil, 5 million come from OPEC – “nations that hate us,” says Pickens.

– The true cost of Middle Eastern oil is over $300 a barrel if you account for U.S. military presence in the Middle East, according to Pickens.

– “Drill baby, drill” – the conservative mantra to drill more oil from the Gulf of Mexico, off the East and West Coast shelves, and the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would produce an extra 2 million barrels a day at best, says Pickens. The would raise America’s domestic production from 7 million to 9 million barrels but still leave America 11 million barrels short each day.

– In ANWR, the bottleneck is the pipeline from Alaska’s north shore. “It would take 30 years to build another pipeline,” says Pickens.

Boone, of course, went on to explain the virtues of domestic natural gas which:

Pickens claims the U.S. has natural gas reserves equivalent to three times that of Saudi Arabia’s known 260 billion-barrel oil reserve when you use a Barrel of Oil Equivalent (BOE) comparison.

– Using BOE, natural gas, at its current price, would be about $1.50 per gallon cheaper than diesel fuel.

– Using BOE, natural gas emits 30% less carbon

He then discussed the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1380) which will help “convert America’s 140,000-unit fleet of 18-wheel truckers to run on natural gas.” Pickens says the cost of converting the next-generation fleet of 18-wheelers would be about $60,000 per vehicle – or roughly $9 billion for the entire 140,000 fleet.”

Karlgaard agreed that was a good use of federal funds.

If you believe the Pickens numbers, our imported OPEC oil is costing America $2 billion a day and would cost $6 billion a day if unsubsidized by the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Also, some percentage of the money we send to Saudi Arabia makes its way to our enemies, such as the Taliban.

To read the entire post on Forbes.com click HERE.

— The Pickens Team