The group of folks in the United States Senate who are trying to focus on the energy situation have named themselves the “Gang of 20.” It started out as the “Gang of 10,” but they’ve attracted support from some of the other Senators, so now it’s doubled in size.
There are 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats in the group. I believe if anyone wants to join, they have to find someone from the other party so it can stay evenly bi-partisan which is probably a pretty good idea.
If you’ve ever sat in a Senate Committee Hearing—at least one that’s not on TV—you know that there are rarely more than a couple of Senators in the room at any given time—one Republican and one Democrat to more-or-less keep an eye on each other.
When it is a specific Senator’s turn to question a witness, very often their staff person will call the office and tell them to get on down there so they can have their turn.
In the case of my meeting, there were 10 Senators—but at the same time my meeting was going on there were several highly publicized meetings going on including the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I only tell you all that so you get the picture: Having 10 Senators sit in a room to talk to one geologist is a pretty big deal.
The “Gang of 20” has adopted the “all of the above” energy strategy. You’ve heard me say often enough: I’m for anything American, so I didn’t disagree with them. But what I <i>did</i> do was to get them to focus on that $700 billion outflow of U.S. dollars every year for imported oil.
I got them to focus on the amount of that oil which is used as a transportation fuel. And then I got them to focus on the amount of that transportation fuel which goes into running tractor-trailers to move goods around the country.
It became very clear to all of them that getting large truck fleets to switch from diesel fuel to natural gas is the key to making a big, big dent in the 12 million barrels of oil we import every day.
Once they got their arms around that, you could just feel them moving toward a specific goal – rather than a slogan which is about all they had before.
The meeting was supposed to go an hour. It went for over 90 minutes. And there were probably 30-40 staff members sitting in the back of the room nodding and taking notes.
At the end of the meeting one of the Senators asked the others what the next step should be. I jumped in and said, “Be bold!”
I have a feeling that the meeting with the Gang of 20 may turn out to be one of the more important meetings I’ve held so far.
— Boone
