Wind farms, natural gas part of Pickens Plan to make US energy self-sufficient

Billionaire Oklahoma businessman T. Boone Pickens wants the United States to wean itself from foreign oil.

The 80-year-old was in Helena Friday touting his Pickens Plan -- which calls for massive investment in wind farms and other renewable sources of electricity, along with converting much of the nation's transportation system to natural gas -- at the annual meeting of the Montana Ambassadors, a statewide group of business leaders appointed by the governor and charged with luring business to the state.

His overriding goal is for the country to become completely self-sufficient when it comes to energy, which means he supports energy development of just about every kind, including coal and nuclear as well as wind and other renewables.

"If it's American, I'm for it," he said.

Pickens noted that global supply of oil is currently around 85 million barrels a day, with the U.S. burning through around 20 million barrels by itself.

"We're using 25 percent of all the oil with 4 percent of the population, and we have only 3 percent of the reserves in the world," he said. "We're going to have to face up to that at some point. We have to start getting ourselves out of the trap we've put ourselves in. It's not anybody's fault but ours."

Pickens said natural gas is abundant in this country, and that using liquified natural gas to run vehicles will be a major step toward energy independence. He envisions ramping up wind power to provide electricity, freeing up natural gas that's currently burned in power plants to be burned in combustion engines instead.

Replacing the 22 percent of electricity that's currently generated by natural gas with wind, and putting that natural gas to work in cars and trucks, would by itself reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil by 38 percent, Pickens said.

While batteries may eventually power the country's passenger cars and light trucks, Pickens said batteries aren't enough to power big rigs. So that's where he's focusing his first big push on converting to natural gas.

Pickens said he proposed to President Obama a plan to convert 380,000 18-wheelers, or 5 percent of the U.S. fleet, to natural gas over the next several years, subsidized at $80,000 per truck. Rather than retrofit existing trucks, Pickens said the plan calls for replacing diesel trucks with natural gas rigs as the old trucks are taken out of service.

The clock is ticking. A reduction in production will quickly push oil prices above their current levels below $40 a barrel, he said, with $75 oil likely by the end of the year and $100 oil back in play within two or three years, despite the global recession.

Further, Pickens said he doubts the world's oil-producing countries will ever be able to push production much beyond the current levels, and even today's output may not be sustainable for long. Major oil fields in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere don't produce as much as they used to, and there aren't many new fields remaining to be tapped.

"I don't think you can hold 85 million barrels a day for 10 years," he said.

Reporter John Harrington:

447-4080 or

john.harrington@helenair.com