T. Boone Pickens is a Texas Oil man. He has been hawking a plan to save America from dependence on foreign oil through his paid “Public Service Announcements”. At first blush, it would be easy to suggest that Boone is busy pushing his plan for Natural gas, Solar and Wind Power because he has some of his own money in those things.
This morning Boone was interviewed on CNBC prior to his given testimony before Congress. Boone mentioned that 38% of our Fossil Fuel needs come from Commercial, Trains or Buses in this country which accounts for $350 billion a year that goes to Arab Sheiks and other oil countries. Boone is suggesting that we move those vehicles out of Diesel and Gasoline and
put them into Natural Gas. Now one might be eager to suggest that his reasoning is based purely on his personal engagement with Natural Gas. We believe however that this idea is about 30 years late. It should have been done and could have been done during the last run up in oil…back in 1978! Now that the cost is edging toward a Trillion dollars a year…perhaps it is time to pay attention!
Boone says that there would be positive side effects to his plan which includes higher gas mileage for passenger cars and a greater engagement on Solar and Wind Power. Boone says he is making this plea because the two Presidential candidates have yet to mention what they might do regarding our dependence of foreign oil….and he wants to know what position they might have on “The Plan”! “This should be a major discussion for both candidates..” he suggests. “We can’t drill our way out of this!” he repeats often!
Now, it might be easy to simply say that T. Boone Pickens just wants to “feather his own nest”…pick up where Enron, Ken Lay and Jeff Skillings left off. Yet, when you look at how the speculators yanked our chain…up to $147 dollar a barrel oil.. perhaps, common sense might be looked at as a possible option. We wish Mr. Pickens well..it is about time that we did something that could address our dependence on foreign oil.
Winships. Making sense today. Wheaties?
Looked away from that mirror long enough to read somebody else’s work, didja, Vern? How nice for us all.
T. Boone Pickens says: “We can’t drill our way out of this!”
Anybody else think that T. Boone is saying this so as to restrict the supply of oil in order to keep the price per barrel sky high? T. Boone is taking care of T. Boone.
“Drill here, drill now, pay less.”
Sign the petition: http://www.americansolutions.com
junior,
The guy’s getting on in years. Are you sure he’s trying to leave as his legacy: a greedy guy all the way to the grave? Isn’t Buffet saying the same things as Pickens? These guys have opinions on how to be successful and they are calling it how they see it.
We’re in a world of hurt at the gas stations right now, because we’ve put off making the decisions to wean ourselves off of petroleum products. It’s time to address the issue for real.
Red Vixen,
I agree that we are in a world of hurt and that we need to ween ourselves off of petroleum products.
“Ween” being the operative word. We cannot go “cold turkey.” Not possible, ain’t happenin’ – alternatives are not the immediate answer.
We need 30 to 40 years of the petro fix.
I think even in the most ideal situation you’re looking at 15-20 years. Drilling now and using everything else we have for that time just to try and stay even.
Remember it’s the poorest who get hurt the worst by this.
Junior -It’s happenin’. Mercedes is converting its entire fleet to alternative fuel by 2015. Have you heard of the hydrogen models(BMW, Honda)? –the electric models (Tesla)? Let’s keep our oil as an emergency back-up supply.
Carl -I would think it is the middle class that is going to be hit hardest. At least in the short term. The poor are already living a “green” lifestyle (farm, mass transit, communal). Just ask SOS (Save Our Selves) — they are seeing a whole other group of people (not poor) coming through their doors. The middle class can thrive once the momentum of the green revolution is established.
Mary,
Where do you live? In Santa Ana the gardening trucks and work trucks line the streets. Many of them were used when purchased for their second lives as daily work trucks. Do you think anyone pays their gardeners, pool cleaner, rug cleaner, maid, roofer or any other, labor at your house person, enough to be able to purchase a new alternative fuel vehicle?
It’s a wonderful idea to just blink your eyes and transform the world, but it isn’t reality.
Those of us that are making payments on cars/trucks are not going to want to get rid of them overnight. When I sell my truck I would like to be able to recoup some of its retained value, at a minimum for a trade in. I may convert it to CNG however, but…
Changing over to CNG is great. I love the fact that OCTA has purchased many of them. I love the idea that we could change many vehicles to CNG without a lot of challenges. HOWEVER, there is little infrastructure to support it in place, so someone is going to have to build it and pay for it. That’s you and me folks. It gets half the mileage of gasoline, so your driving range would effectively be half what it is now, so there better be some new stations installed along the highways.
Safety during a collision is also a serious concern when driving around with a tank full of pressurized natural gas. Retrofitting vehicles with pressure cylinders to hold that CNG is different than designing from scratch, a vehicle to hold those tanks safely. They are round cylinders not rectangular tanks for a non-compressed liquid. Usually when a vehicle is converted, and you pay your $1500-$2500, you get tanks installed but they would not be able to meet the same safety standards that a new vehicle would have to.
If the NIMBYs had not vetoed the CNG terminal that was planned offshore for the LA area we would be in much better shape to be able to implement this idea. But they were more concerned about other things to appreciate the idea at the time so now we are years behind on that too. My understanding is we don’t have the kind of capacity to supply the area with CNG as a motor fuel.
I like the idea of increasing the use of CNG as a motor fuel, but as a replacement for gasoline, straight across the board, it will take years and major money input to implement.
The only way to apply pressure to the oil futures market and drive down gas prices is by increasing supply, even by small margins, while at the same time exploring and implementing new technologies and ideas along with conservation. Anything else is pure pipe dreams! There is NO direct replacement that can be pulled off the shelf that wont take a lot of time and a whole lot more money, period.
Like all the rest of the “green” ideas there are pitfalls to all of them one way or another. As I pointed out before, solar powered, battery operated vehicles are a great idea around town, but the batteries are toxic materials with limited life spans of a couple of years. The manufacturing of them employs child labor in foreign nations and pollutes land, air and water in those locations. There is currently no known safe and “green” battery technology available anywhere, it’s just trading poisons and where you choose them to be deposited, and who it affects as workers.