In testimony before Congress Wednesday, energy magnate T. Boone Pickens urged the passage of a bill that would offer incentives for the purchase of natural-gas trucks.
"The only way we can solve the OPEC oil threat is by replacing their expensive, dirty fuel with cleaner, cheaper, American natural gas," Pickens told the U.S. House of Representatives Committee On Ways and Means.
Pickens was pushing for passage of H.R. 1835, The NAT GAS Act, which was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 1, 2009 and has 138 bipartisan cosponsors. The Senate version of this bill, S. 1408, was introduced on July 8, 2009 as a bipartisan bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
The bill would offer a number of tax incentives for buyers, makers and fuelers of natural gas fueled vehicles, as well as requiring 50 percent of all new vehicles purchased or placed in service by the U.S. government by December 31, 2014, to be capable of operating on compressed or liquefied natural gas.
Last month, speaking at the National NGV (natural gas vehicle) Fleet Summit prior to the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Pickens predicted the legislation would pass by Memorial Day and said it would offer a $65,000 tax credit for the purchase of natural gas powered trucks.
In Wednesday's testimony, Pickens predicted the legislation would Put 236,000 clean natural gas trucks on the roads, using a cheap domestic source of energy, and create 600,000 new "green" jobs.
"America has not had an energy plan for 40 years," said Pickens, who created the Pickens Plan which pushes natural gas, wind power and other domestic energy alternatives. "Every President since Richard Nixon has pledged to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. President Obama has pledged to eliminate our dependence on OPEC oil in 10 years. We can do that. And if we do, President Obama will be the only one to have made good on his promise.
"We're witnessing the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, sending more than $1 billion a day to foreign countries for oil. Not only that, but because this committee has jurisdiction over trade, I know you will be interested in this. In January 2010 our trade deficit for the month was $37.3 billion; $27.5 billion of that was money we sent overseas to import oil. That means foreign oil is responsible for approximately three quarters of our trade deficit. It's time to invest as much of that as we can back in America...and create American jobs, not OPEC jobs,.
"Two-thirds of our foreign oil is used as a transportation fuel. Building more nuclear plants or more solar or wind farms will not make a dent in our dependence on foreign oil. The only way we can solve the OPEC oil threat is by replacing their expensive, dirty fuel with cleaner, cheaper, American natural gas. Study after study shows we are awash in natural gas. We have well over a 200-year supply by current estimates. We're going to look like fools if we don't use it in transportation."
Skeptics, Boone has said, point out that there's no natural gas fueling infrastructure. "Forget it," Pickens said in his remarks before Congress. "Let's look to our free enterprise system. If you create the market, the private sector will build it."
In addition, he said, "Heavy-duty trucks use approximately one-third of the oil we import as a transportation fuel. And, because heavy-duty trucks either go home to the barn every night or, if they are over-ther-oad 18-wheelers, they tend to run the same routes on a regular basis. Therefore, the often-cited argument against NGVs: "we don't have the refueling infrastructure" doesn't apply.
"Can you imagine what would have happened if we had told Henry Ford: 'Forget about building Model Ts. There's no place to fuel them'?"
Pickens also Wednesday reported that the U.S. spent nearly $28 billion on imported oil in March and predicted that increasing oil prices would lead the U.S. to pay nearly 25 percent more for oil in 2010 than it did last year.
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