T. Boone Pickens At The National Fleet NGV Summit Louisville KY

By Bob Gordon
President and Co-publisher
The Auto Channel

Louisville, KY March 24, 2010; Boone Pickens, Founder and Chairman of BP Capital Management and author of "The Pickens Plan" was in Louisville, KY today to address the National Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) Fleet Summit.

A fit and feisty Pickens, arguably the nation's most vocal advocate for energy independence (along with The Auto Channel), told trucking fleet managers from across the United States along with truck manufacturing executives that “the U.S. must get off its 40 year reliance on foreign oil, through either a proactive measured and planned energy policy (Pickens Plan)or as a too-late knee-jerk reaction to the disaster of a predicted world oil shortfall, and its resulting $300 a barrel oil”, a catastrophe that he sees coming in less than 10 years, as demand eats up the world’s diminishing supply of oil.

The Pickens Plan is centered around a timely switch to plentiful and domestic CNG as a replacement for the diesel fuel used by the 8 million 18 wheelers that comprise the heavy duty segment of the 250 million vehicles on America’s roads. This change in fuel will “by itself reduce the United States’ need for 50% of our current OPEC oil imports, and can save U.S truck operators 30-50% on fuel costs, or hundreds of millions of dollars”, he said.

Mr. Pickens promised passage of the NAT GAS Act within a month or two, as both the Senate and House version of the bill have unequalled bi-partisan support.

He also said that “the U.S. lags way behind the rest of the world in the use of natural gas as a fuel in vehicles, with 12 million CNG vehicles in the world and just 180,000 here in the U.S, in spite of the fact that the U.S. has the world’s largest natural gas reserves.”

Throughout his address his constant theme was that natural gas was ours and plentiful, with a minimum 200 year inventory of more than 4000 trillion CFU of natural gas, or the equivalent of 700 billion barrels of oil as compared to Saudi Arabia’s professed 250 and Mr. Pickens estimate of 125 billion barrel oil reserve.

He warned that today the United States with just 4% of the world’s population uses 25% of the world’s oil supply, creating a recipe for disaster. There is no free market for oil, whatever OPEC wants, OPEC gets…so it is imperative to institute a sane and well thought out energy plan before it’s too late.”

When asked who will pay for the needed CNG infrastructure to service the trucking industry, he replied “we will with the $1 billion dollars a day we presently send out of our country, and which our economy never sees again...American’s are financing both sides of the war on terrorism, there are countries out there that are friendly to us, but are not our friends.

He went on to say that,“some out there might not like my energy plan, but they don’t have one of their own… and their lack of a plan is a tacit support for foreign oil…whatever alt fuel plan we do get will be better than foreign oil”,

In a post-speech interview Mr. Pickens advocated the use of “any other alt fuel as long as it’s American” as the replacement for foreign oil based fuels for passenger cars and other light duty vehicles.

We at The Auto Channel couldn’t agree more.

Mr. Pickens was joined at the one-day National NGV Fleet Summit by top-level speakers from leading heavy-duty truck manufacturers, gas equipment and technology providers, and fuel station developers.

This event took place in the new Crowne Plaza Hotel Louisville Airport, in conjunction with the Mid-America Trucking Show being held at the Louisville Fairground Convention Facility.

The NGV Fleet Summit was presented by Clean Energy and sponsored by Daimler Trucks North America, Freightliner, Freightliner Custom Chassis, Westport Innovations, Kenworth, and Peterbilt Motor Company. This event is organized by environmental consulting firm Gladstein, Neandross & Associates.