Pick-ens Some New Energy Policy

Yesterday I attended a talk and town hall event featuring everyone's favorite reformed oilman, Texas' own T. Boone Pickens. He shuffled onto the stage after an overdone introduction by the MSA Vice President, receiving some final whispers in his ear for instructions, and greeted the crowd politely for the warm welcome. Pickens easily took command of the stage, totally in his own world almost, foregoing any formality or rhetoric normally heard around campus, and just plain talked to his audience. A bare whiteboard sat behind him, dressed in a plain gray suit and lipstick-red tie, his thin white hair cropped as if he was doing to church on a hot Dallas day. But this guy is an oilman, he can't possibly have real convictions about what he preaches can he? Wrong. Pickens has both bought into and personally calculated the reality that oil is running out, and America in particular is facing a not-so-long emergency to compensate for its drunkenness on Saudi sweet crude.

"I'm doing this for you. I am working for you," he said at the start. At his age, he gets it that he likely won't see his cause through to its (hopefully) successful end, even though if Pickens had his way, it would be taken care of in ten years flat. "It is up to you to finish the job I start," Pickens flatly told the crowd. His mission is simple: no imported oil in America by 2018.

The United States spends $700 billion annually on importing oil, and our consumption is around 85 million barrels of oil. Pickens thinks that using natural gas in place of oil can eliminate 38 percent of that $700 billion, wiping out a significant chunk of U.S. import costs.

Now, I'm still a little skeptical of the viability of using natural gas as a major source of energy. That's not to say that it doesn't work or wouldn't be a good solution, but it sort of reminds me of the ethanol bust. If the government commits to converting 38 percent of the US energy supply to a different source, how long will it take in terms of actual conversion, for US Government speed? I mean, we were promised corn-based ethanol about five years ago, and where is it? In about 1 out of every thousand gas stations (made-up estimate). We produced so much corn with the subsidies on Big Farm, that countries that import our corn asked us to stop because they didn't want it anymore! Pickens says that there is a vast supply of natural gas under parts of Texas, the Canadian border, Appalachia, and the Pacific Northwest, but with a lot of industry now committed to drilling for oil off of our own shores (A ridiculous option according to Pickens), how can we afford it?

One guy tried to burn Pickens during the Q&A by saying that as a commodity, gas would somehow find its way onto the global market. Wrong. Brazil didn't put sugarcane ethanol on the commodity market, did it? This is the point of the Pickens Plan: this would be OUR commodity, to sell at a price we determine and to serve as the placeholder while the other alternative energy sources are streamlined and plugged into the grid. The one thing that I do not think is viable is Pickens' desire to convert much of the US truck transportation fleet to natural gas. Even though diesel fuel is more expensive than unleaded gasoline, I think a truck that runs on batteries or a hydrogen cell is much more efficient. It's unclear how damaging the use of natural gas is to the environment, but look: If using unleaded gasonline or diesel fuel at 4/5 dollars a gallon for another few years is gonna help pay for solar cells and wind turbines (Pickens wants to build a wind belt along what is basically the Mississippi River area...why doesn't he just focus on that??), then I'm all for it. The gasoline tax has got to be increased. Anything we do right now to decrease our carbon output or whatever it is, is immediately wiped out by one day of China's or India's energy use. We build one new coal plant every few years. They build one every two weeks. It's that unbalanced.

The point is, Pickens is doing something no one else will: taking a lead on what to do to fix part of America's energy problem. A private citizen has done what government will not: stand up and offer solutions. It may seem like a conservative principle, but hey, if no one else is doing anything, somebody's got to come out and do it, and I'm glad Pickens is out there with such a large support base. He's nearly there to perfecting his plan, but that's the beauty of it: it can never be totally perfect, but it's a start.