The following op-ed by T. Boone Pickens ran in the Orlando Sentinel on March 7, 2012.
Gasoline prices are spiking. Again. And again the public is concerned. We’ve been through this song and dance before. The rhetoric is the same. Blame it on the Middle East. Blame it on speculators. Blame it on the oil and gas industry.
Here’s where I assign the fault. Washington’s continued inability to develop a comprehensive national energy plan. China has one. Virtually every other country does, too. Washington should follow suit, and deliver on the four-decade-long promises of energy independence and enhanced energy security.
Now is the time.
Like the 1993 movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, we wake up every couple of years and go through exactly the same sequence of events with exactly the same results.
Crude oil is selling for more than $100 per barrel. Just last week the mere rumor of a pipeline explosion in Saudi Arabia pushed the price above $110 in intraday trading. It’s no wonder premium and midgrade gasoline is now more than $4 per gallon in most of the United States, and regular grade is hot on their heels.
Put simply, we have little say in the price of oil. It’s a global commodity. The Saudis have told the world they need $90-plus-per-barrel oil to meet social commitments. They are likely to get it.
There are those who tout progress in the domestic-energy arena, and there is some good news. Domestic production is up, due, in large part, to technological advances in drilling and production related to hydrofracking.
But there’s also a stunning lack of progress in a key area, and that’s the national security risks associated with our continued dependence on OPEC oil, and the greatest transfer of wealth in human history to nations that, in many instances, are hostile to America. Each day, we buy five million barrels a day from the cartel.
Today, we find ourselves the world’s oil police. There are 11 U.S. carriers. Outside of U.S. coastal waters, there are more deployed in the Middle East — to protect oil supplies — than anywhere else.
If you factor in those costs, the U.S. has spent $7 trillion on OPEC oil since 1976. It’s fiscal and economic insanity.
Any national energy plan must focus on transportation. It accounts for two-thirds of total oil use in the U.S.
I have been — and remain — a staunch advocate of renewable energy, including wind and solar, as part of the long-term energy mix. But those are power-generation fuels. Transportation — and replacing dirtier, expensive OPEC crude with cleaner domestic fuels — is the way to go. And, on that front, all roads lead to America’s natural gas.
There is legislation in Washington — the NAT GAS Act — that will provide economic incentives to move the nation’s heavy-duty truck and fleet vehicles away from OPEC oil/diesel/gasoline to domestic natural gas.
With such incentives, we could utilize those nearly 8 million vehicles to cut OPEC dependency in half in five years.
The legislation has more than 180 sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has bipartisan support. It should be embraced, adopted and incorporated into a broader national energy strategy.
Detractors and special interests argue that government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, and that we should let the free market work. I say it’s time to pick America over OPEC, and that you have your head buried in the sand if you think energy globally is a free market. OPEC is a cartel, not a free market. We compete for energy with China. Far from a free-market economy.
A great deal has been made of the possible dangers in recovering natural gas — the fracking process itself.
Fracking has been used as far back as the 1950s, and used on more than 800,000 wells in the United States.
The oil and gas industry has a solid track record in meeting America’s energy needs safely. But we need to ensure public confidence. I’m for conducting operational audits on, say, 5 percent of those wells if that’s what it takes to address public concerns, but so long as it does not impede the development of this critical resource.
It’s time to stop the insanity, and all it will take is leadership. It’s time to demand that from Washington.
Everyone’s voice is important in this debate.
T. Boone Pickens is a Texas oil billionaire who has become a leading advocate for alternative energy.