T. Boone, Natural Gas, and the Whiff of Something Else
Friday, February 19th, 2010We’ve heard a lot from T. Boone Pickens about alternative energy, but until recently his main focus was wind turbines. Then the economy crashed, investors didn’t have money to spend on those kinds of projects, and Pickens quit running his TV commercials about big West Texas wind farms.
Speaking in Orlando on Monday, February 15, 2010, the Texas billionaire emphasized natural gas as the first step toward energy independence for the nation. He, like many natural gas advocates, are counting on the Barnett Shale Formation of North Texas, a field spreading over a minimum of 17 counties, as the source of all that fuel.
In a story for Automotive News by Chrissie Thompson, Pickens is quoted. “I’m not here to sell the guys today on switching over to natural gas,” but then tailored most of his remarks to the National Automobile Dealers Association in that direction — with a sideline or two into saying electric powertrains would be okay too, but with an interesting caveat.
“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t get off Saudi oil and end up with a Chinese battery.”
These comments went along with predictions that the price of oil, currently at $77 a barrel, will hit $300 or even $400 in ten years time.
Pickens said he supports pending legislation in Congress that would grant tax credits of $65,000 on purchases of new heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks powered by natural gas.
The fact that Pickens made his money on oil and gas and is promoting natural gas as the alternative fuel of the future with a side dish of xenophobia is troublesome. Certainly the United States has a dangerous degree of dependence on foreign fuel, but energy isolationism is not the answer either.
Truth be told, a wide-range of alternative fuel vehicles are likely in our future, and “Chinese batteries” will play a role in that. There’s going to be a great deal of money to be made in the green economy of the future, but if that economy is run with nothing but the wildcat oil ethics of the last century, the problems will just shift from one commodity to another and no real progress will be made — environmentally or politically.