The Congressional Independence Day recess is here. The amount of time available to pass substantive legislation before both houses adjourn is dwindling.
Between the end of the July 4th Recess and the August Recess, Congress will try to pass the financial reform bill, and the Senate will fulfill its Constitutional duties on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. With all that, the single largest unfinished piece of business for the 111th Congress remains the adoption of a comprehensive energy bill.
I have been around this business for a long time, and I understand that an energy bill is likely to contain a great deal of compromise on key issues. That's the nature of the system -- you have compromise to get the things you really need and serve what you believe to be the greater good. The debate surrounding the balance between our environmental and energy polices, while important, should not delay us from adopting legislation to reduce our dependence on OPEC oil.
We must focus on the amount of oil we continue to import - day-in and day-out - to fuel our national fleets of cars, light trucks, and heavy-duty vehicles. Nobody disagrees on that one.
We can talk about the need for more solar and wind farms to produce energy. I'm all for those. I've said a thousand times since we started working on the Pickens Plan that "I'm for anything American."
But wind, solar energy and seaweed won't move a car, and batteries today won't move an 18-wheeler. Approximately 70 percent of the oil we import is used for transportation. Heavy trucks use about one-third of that. This includes the eight million 18-wheelers, which move goods from ports to distribution centers and from distribution centers to factories and stores. It also includes the tens of thousands of refuse and recycling trucks as well as all those school and municipal buses.
The provisions of the bi-partisan NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1835 and S. 1408) are specifically aimed at reducing our imports of OPEC oil.
The NAT GAS Act would provide tax incentives to build a model for using domestic natural gas as a principal transportation fuel instead of imported diesel. It creates a test for building a domestic, heavy-duty truck fleet based on domestic natural gas through replacing trucks burning imported diesel during the normal course of fleet rotation.
With unemployment stubbornly remaining above nine percent, the federal government should be looking for a sure-fire plan to create private sector jobs. The NAT GAS Act would jump-start the natural gas vehicle (NGV) industry in the United States, creating new jobs throughout the supply chain.
When he accepted the Democratic nomination for President, then-Senator Barack Obama pledged to get America off Middle Eastern oil within ten years.
Two of those years have already gone by. But we can, during the next eight years, meet his goal. President Obama can earn a place in history as the first president in more than 40 years to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
When Congress returns from its Independence Day recess, it must focus on America becoming less dependent on OPEC oil. We need a vote on energy legislation to make America stronger, safer, cleaner, and more prosperous by passing a bill including the provisions outlined in the NAT GAS Act.
Follow T. Boone Pickens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pickensplan
Listen, pal, just tell the truth, the whole truth! That the first and foremost you do all this in order to enrich yourself and your investors and, perhaps, the country as a whole might benefit as well (debatable.) When you tell the WHOLE TRUTH, more people will believe you and in your cause.
And when I say "perhaps", that's because very soon we might realize that the "shale gas" which allows you to even make the argument for the use of Nat. Gas, is by a factor of magnitude (10X) more dangerous to extract than that oil from the bottom of the sea. In the Gulf, we talk about dead turtles, in the shale we will talk about dead people!
I hope the truth about the dangers of shale gas is known before the whores in the Congress will enable Boon to make a few more billion dollars, and will make 60 million people mortally sick!
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2009/10/t-boone-pickens-confirms-iraq-war-for.html
Isn't it time we stop letting oil & energy company execs stop running our energy and foreign policy? They will do what it best for their own pocket book which is not necessarily what is good for the rest of us.
Case in point: if you build a wind or solar plant, once it's built, the "fuel" is free, so costs go down dramatically over time and then to near nothing once the plant is paid off. And if the plant charges too much for that energy, you can put a solar panel on your roof or windmill in your back yard.
Getting fuel from oil or natural gas requires a constant input of fuel, which means a constant flow of profit to those who drill for it and sell it. If you don't like the price, you can't exactly drill your own well in your backyard and refine it yourself.
Our addiction to oil & gas is a boot the wealthy have on our throat, and whenever we think we see a way to wiggle free, they stomp down harder. We need to cut off their feet by switching to renewables now, and as individuals if our government won't give up the petroleum & gas money teat.
While I agree with the Pickens Plan, I do not like the idea of you using your wealth and power to gain even more control of the US Energy Industry, via Natural Gas and Wind Power, and thereby, increasing your own fortunes
Your statement makes you look like a non thinker.
I don't know how much you know of the addictive powers of making money, but I personally never found it much of a problem. I know plenty of people who walked away from lucrative careers for the love of throwing a leg over their motorcycle and riding out to Marshall (Ca) for a half dozen fresh oysters in the middle of the day. If anything keeps people at work past the time when they should be, it's not the money. I am not sure you will understand "power" when I say, "It's the power", so I'll explain. What keeps successful people at work too long is the leverage and resources they have that enables them to get THEIR solution implemented. Eg; Steve Jobs (perfect example). The money is nothing more than a byproduct.
By the way, I imagine you neither have money nor know anyone who has any substantial amount of money. Pickens is no Jobs or Gates.
Obama is as usual, clueless about using natural gas for the long term benefit of the American economy. He should have insisted on transitioning large trucks to natural gas as part of the GM bailout
If you read Obama's books you find he's a pretty smart guy. Too bad he doesn't govern as well as he writes.
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