Ending Our Oil Dependence
“And if I fail, then get foreign oil; so the argument is tilted in my favor.”
Fueling the War
“I feel that OPEC is the enemy; we’re paying for both sides of the war in the Mideast,” Pickens asserts.
“I want to get off of oil from the Mideast. And with that I think that we’re going to be able to bring people home,” Pickens says. “I do not like wars. I don’t understand what I see in the Mideast.
“We don’t need to secure the oil over there. If you put down how much money you’re spending to be sure we have oil in America, the numbers are huge,” he stresses.
Rosser adds, “That, by the way, the taxpayers are paying for.”
“Remember, if you’re buying foreign oil, that goes out of the country — gone, to never be seen again,” Pickens states. “If you’re using domestic fuel, you create jobs, people make a profit, taxes are paid and the economy is helped.”
A large part of the problem Pickens says is that Americans do not understand energy. “It’s just too easy to pull into the gasoline pump and fill up and go. They don’t know where it comes from.
“I always ask the question, would you like to get off of OPEC oil? This is how you can help,” says Pickens. “And if somebody really starts to jerk you around a bit, what I say is if you’re for foreign oil, then you’re un-American.
“That usually sets them off,” he laughs. “But it’s true.”
Moving America Forward
“What I want the president to do is to follow up on what he told us he was going to do,” Pickens says. “He said in 10 years we will not import any oil from the Mideast.
“Two and a half years has past and he’s done nothing,” Pickens says. “Now what I would like for him to do, to announce by executive order, all vehicles purchased by the federal government will be on domestic fuel.
“I don’t care if it’s a battery, plug-in, natural gas, I don’t care; just so it’s American.”
When asked what’s next, Pickens says right now it’s just, “an oar in the water.
“You have to promote the results of it as you progress because the results will be very good,” he says of natural gas. “Once people go to it, they never go back.”
Industry Use of Natural Gas
Omnitran CFO Robert Miller states, “Over the next five years, as much as 80 percent of the country’s natural gas needs will be met by onshore domestic production.
“With the introduction of non-traditional gas from shale, proven reserves have been increased significantly, lead times on development of producing properties has been reduced and production is coming from a broad geography. The days when the tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico could adversely impact price or availability will be over.”
He stresses, “With our role in the country’s emergency response operations, stable source of supply is critical.”
AT&T Global Fleet Operations Vice President Jerome Webber says, “Recognizing the economic and environmental implications of maintaining so many vehicles, we set out to find cleaner, more efficient methods of powering our fleet,” he says. “The deployment of CNG vehicles throughout the country is part of a planned initiative to spend up to $565 million announced in March 2009 to deploy approximately 15,000 fleet vehicles nationally with more fuel-efficient models through 2018.
“In developing this strategy, we recognized that the lack of transportation infrastructure presents challenges that impact our ability to deploy certain types of vehicles — such as compressed natural gas vehicles.” Webber continues, “However, we know the size of our fleet commitment has the potential to signal market demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“To that end,” continues Webber, “We will continue working with policy makers and stakeholders to accelerate the development of transportation infrastructure required to support greater use of fuel-efficient vehicles.”
