In the State of the Union address last week, President Obama announced his intention to encourage the development of America’s abundant natural gas resources. The effects of his announcement and subsequent speeches are already being felt from coast to coast.

Wall Street certainly took notice. In an article at Forbes.com, Certified Financial Analyst Robert Stammers points out that “the future is brightening for the natural gas industry.”

As the demand for natural gas increases and catches up with supply, companies – like Exxon - that made early investments should benefit from having invested ahead of the trend.

Stammers notes that natural gas is not only a cheaper energy source than oil at current prices but it is also much more environmentally friendly:

Natural gas has relatively high hydrogen content; it burns about 50% cleaner than coal and roughly 30% cleaner than oil. Many experts, including energy magnate T. Boone Pickens, believe that natural gas is the transitional fuel to bridge the gap for green energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear.

Read the complete article HERE.

The United States and the European Union are getting ready to implement sanctions on Iran. The goal is to get that country’s leaders to abandon their nuclear ambitions.

Do you want to guess who will reap the benefits of these policies? For starters, China.

According to Reuters, Iran’s oil production won’t be curtailed. Thanks to China’s growing demand for oil, Iranian production will remain steady once the European Union’s embargo goes into effect this summer.

And, in addition to picking up the slack, China might actually pay a lower price for Iranian oil because of this lack of competition:

Iran will continue to sell much the same volume of oil - 2.6 million barrels per day or around 3 percent of world supply - but almost all of it will flow to China, they reason. And being pretty much Iran’s only remaining customer, Beijing will be able to negotiate a much reduced price.

Another big winner in this game of petro politics? Russia.

The world’s biggest oil producer [Russia] is well positioned to raise its market share in Europe, despite misgivings among some Europeans about relying too heavily on Russia for oil and gas. Payment disputes between Russia and neighboring Ukraine have in the past threatened transit gas supplies to Europe.

“I’m sure Moscow is watching the situation with big interest,” said José Sergio Gabrielli, chief executive of Brazil’s Petrobras. Arkady Dvorkovich, the Kremlin’s top economic aide, concurred that Russia stood to benefit from sanctions that were guaranteed to keep oil prices at least at current levels around $100 a barrel by his reckoning.

Read more HERE.

Pickens, who announced the formation of The Pickens Plan on Squawkbox in the summer of 2008, said that the President now agreed with him that utilizing domestic resources was the only way to significantly reduce our dependence on OPEC oil and the only domestic resource to do that was to move heavy-duty trucks and fleet vehicles from imported diesel to domestic natural gas.

Watch below.

The energy initiatives outlined by the President include incentives to move America’s heavy duty and fleet vehicles to domestic natural gas as a transportation fuel away from OPEC oil/diesel/gasoline, which Pickens has called a grave threat to America’s national and economic security.

The newly unveiled plan by the President also calls for a dramatic increase in the use of renewables – chiefly wind and solar – in America’s power generation grid.

Those are key pillars of The Pickens Plan, first outlined by Pickens in July 2008. For three-and-a-half years, Pickens has invested nearly $100 million and thousands of hours to educate the public and Washington policymakers on the need to address the OPEC oil threat.

“I’ve accomplished my goal of achieving legislation and proposed policies to help solve the OPEC oil crisis,” Pickens said. “The ball’s now in Washington’s court. What we need is leadership. Despite the political partisanship that divides Washington, I am hopeful and confident Congress will put America’s best energy future first.

“While we can take a victory lap, the work is not done. It’s great to see the President engaging in important and meaningful dialogue on this subject. But proposals are not enacted policies. The pressure needs to remain on. We can’t let the special interests do what they’ve done for 40 years, and that’s block a long-term energy plan for America.

Added Pickens: “While Washington appears to now understand the issue, make no mistake. I will continue to be outspoken on this subject, and continue to call out the special interests that are working to undermine this bold and important agenda.”

During his campaign, Pickens has amassed a 1.7 million person “army” that has been a key voice in advancing The Pickens Plan energy agenda. Pickens said he will work diligently with that army to ensure they remain educated on energy issues and equipped to play a lead role in advancing the natural gas transportation fuel initiatives as well as a renewable power generation future. That will include a focus on calling out the special interests who oppose them, he said.

Legislation to provide incentives to move the nation’s heavy duty and fleet vehicles to natural gas has widespread bipartisan support in Congress, with more than 180 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. A similar bill in the Senate also has strong bipartisan support.

Menendez and Burr are co-authors of the NAT GAS Act of 2011.

Menendez stated:

“Our bipartisan bill will create jobs and lower transportation costs and do so without adding one dime to the deficit. This is exactly the kind of bipartisan proposal we should be able to pass, even in an election year.”

Burr added:

“Natural gas represents a way to boost our nation’s energy security and help free us from our over-reliance on foreign oil, and I am pleased to hear that the President is committed to working with us on this effort.”

President Obama Las Vegas, NV. The Las Vegas Revew-Journal summarized his remarks this way:

In a visit to a UPS facility this morning, President Barack Obama praised the shipping company for “leading by example” in converting its long-haul trucks to use liquefied natural gas instead of diesel fuel

To read the entire release by Senators Burr and Menendez, including a summary of the NAT GAS Act, click HERE.

– The Pickens Team

This is significant, because it incorporates many aspects of the Pickens Plan, which we unveiled three-and-a-half years ago. The plan, designed to address foreign oil dependence and “the greatest transfer of wealth in history,” calls for an expanded use of domestic natural gas as a heavy duty and fleet vehicle transportation alternative to OPEC oil/diesel/gasoline, and a greater use of renewables (wind and solar) in power generation.

Hopefully you can take a minute to watch this live via the following link. It is scheduled to begin at 1 pm ET/noon CT.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/live

I plan to issue a news release on next steps later today.

Please direct any feedback you have to me through my Twitter account, @boonepickens

The expanded use of natural gas in America — in power generation and transportation — has enormous bipartisan support in the Congress and in the states. It is time to move from vague generalities to specifics on how we make this transition happen. I am confident that President Obama, as well as all the candidates for President, will lay out detailed plans on how they intend to achieve it.

We cannot solve the OPEC dependency crisis without a focus on transportation. It is two-thirds of all oil use. Oil is not a major player in the production of electricity so creating more energy from natural gas, hydro, wind, solar or nuclear will not have a major impact on our dependence on OPEC for our oil. Finding a substitute for oil as a major transportation fuel will.

We have massive amounts of natural gas reserves in the United States and we should immediately move to better utilize it. As a White House report on rebuilding our economy states, natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels.

America does not have a natural gas production problem — we are awash in natural gas. What we have is a demand problem and unless we bring both sides of the equation in balance, we will see this cleaner, cheaper, abundant, domestic resource exported in greater and greater quantities.

I hope the President and the Congress will call on American ingenuity and creativity to utilize all of our domestic resources. America is blessed with having the cheapest energy in the world right now. It is that cheap energy — including coal, oil and natural gas — that will not only fuel our factories, cars, and trucks, but will fuel the resurgence of manufacturing in America, while creating solid, well-paying, and permanent jobs.

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Obama urged Congress to develop the energy plan this country deserves.

This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy - a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

Speaking to a standing-room-only audience that included Members of both the House and the Senate as well as the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President singled out America’s abundant natural gas reserves as the cornerstone of such a plan, one that will generate much needed jobs as well as decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my Administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

The President also pointed out several other crucial benefits to developing America’s abundant supplies of domestic natural gas. First of all, it’s a cleaner burning fuel that’s better for the environment. And, second, it can power cars as well as heavy-duty trucks.

The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy.

Read the State of the Union address HERE.

In the hubbub around the president’s decision not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the United States, Americans missed the big picture. While conservatives have been fighting to build a pipeline to import more foreign oil and deepen U.S. dependence, the U.S. is poised to transform its energy portfolio by developing domestic resources—renewable and mineral—that will let it become a net exporter of clean energy and energy technology in this decade.

Under President Obama’s leadership, we appear to be at the beginning of a domestic gas and oil boom. After a four-decade decline in oil production, the U.S. is now producing more than half of our oil domestically. This can free us from our addiction to foreign-sourced barrels, particularly if we utilize our dramatically larger and cheaper natural gas reserves. Natural gas now costs the equivalent of less than $15 per barrel, versus the $100-plus barrels we import from the Middle East.

There are critical environmental questions associated with developing these resources, particularly concerning methane leakage and water pollution. Yet as long as we ensure high regulatory standards and stay away from the riskiest and most polluting of these activities, we can safely assemble a collection of lower-carbon, affordable and abundant domestic-energy assets that will dramatically improve our economy and our environment. Under President Obama’s watch, increased domestic production from developing these reserves has already created 75,000 new gas and oil-production jobs since 2009. And we have much further to go.

At the same time, the U.S. is well on its way to becoming a global clean-energy leader. America is the largest clean-energy investor, after reclaiming this title from China last year. Our companies make over 75% of all venture investments in clean technologies world-wide. Overall, because of U.S. public and private investments in clean energy—including renewables, efficiency, transportation and infrastructure—the clean economy grew by 8.3% from 2008 to 2009, even during the depths of the recession.

Expanding these clean-energy investments is good economics. Several technologies, such as solar power, are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels, even without considering the health and other costs of pollution. And they will help preserve and expand America’s middle class, because energy investments are a particularly effective method of “insourcing” manufacturing jobs, which in turn spur jobs in invention, installation and maintenance.

Such jobs provide a strong middle-class income to workers who have technical skills beyond high school but who lack a four-year college degree. What’s more, U.S. clean-energy investment shows moral leadership, as we combine our advanced energy strategies with strong safeguards to protect our citizens and our planet from polluters and the worst impacts of global warming.

Our clean-technology edge is due in no small part to the business community’s overwhelming response to specific policy tools—from government investment in research and development to targeted tax incentives to spur renewable energy manufacturing and installation. For instance, the Production Tax Credit, first passed in 1992, has generated massive amounts of new growth in the wind industry, a sector employing 85,000 Americans. But each time Congress allows this credit to expire after a mere two years, investment grinds to a halt, giving our global competitors the advantage in innovation, manufacturing and installation. The Production Tax Credit is set to expire again this year.

If we want to cement our status as a leader in the global marketplace, we must extend clean-energy programs like the Production Tax Credit and revive the Manufacturing Tax Credit, which helps factories retool for the clean-tech sector. Such programs will give clean-energy entrepreneurs the assurance they need to invest and expand their businesses.

The leadership that Americans are asking for is within our reach. Our economy can go from being weighed down by oil imports to soaring ahead, powered increasingly by domestically produced clean energy, and energy services and technology. The Obama administration has taken a smart approach, but Congress must now work with the president to secure our leadership position going forward.

Mr. Steyer is the founder of Farallon Capital Management LLC. Mr. Podesta, a former White House chief of staff for President Clinton, is chairman of the Center for American Progress.

In the election cycle of 2008, virtually every candidate for every federal office from both political parties made a campaign promise to enact legislation to reduce our dependence on OPEC oil. These numbers I have cited prove little has been done.

Today we’re paying about $100 per barrel for foreign oil and, in the case of OPEC oil, often to nations that are hostile to our best interests. Oil prices are up when they should be going down. Demand for oil globally is down while domestic production in America is up. There’s one word that describes why oil prices are up instead of down: geopolitics, much of it attributable to the seemingly never-ending turmoil in the Middle East.

Any way you cut it, America is being cheated. Energy has failed to emerge as a top-tier election year issue, despite the lingering threat to our economic recovery and our national security.

For more than four decades, every presidential candidate has said something to the effect of, “Elect me, and we’ll be energy independent.” That’s four decades of failed promises.

It is time we hold our political candidates accountable. After a lengthy discussion with my dad one day, he said, “Son, you are speaking in vague generalities.” It’s easy to think the same thing when we hear our presidential candidates talk about energy. It’s time to move from vague generalities to specifics.

Tomorrow night, Barack Obama will deliver his fourth State of the Union Address as President of the United States, immediately followed by the Republican response. I hope you will listen in with me to hear whether or not either party plans to make energy a top issue in this election cycle, or if we will just continue on this path of being cheated.

While you’re watching the speeches, follow President Obama and the Republican candidates on Facebook and Twitter and let them know we expect more than another empty promise – we want a specific solution, now.

Let me know once you’ve sent a message to the candidates by sending me a tweet at @BoonePickens.

Industry experts are predicting that over the next two decades natural gas will be the fastest growing fossil fuel globally. According to a report released by BP, use of natural gas will grow at an average annual rate of 2.1% through 2030.

The report also indicated that current global natural gas reserves are enough to cover 59 years of production at current levels.

“The world had 6,609 TCF of proved gas reserves in 2010, sufficient for 59 years of production at current levels.”

Read more HERE.

In 2011, The U.S. imported 4.1 billion barrels of petroleum accounting for 60 percent of the U.S. supply. The total cost of those imports was $453.6 billion. That represents an increase in cost of 34.6 percent over 2010 and a whopping increase of 71.8 percent over 2009.

Commenting on the latest oil numbers, Pickens said:

“The third anniversary of the inauguration of President Barack Obama is about a week away. In the election cycle of 2008, virtually ever candidate, for every federal office, from both political parties made a campaign promise to enact legislation to reduce our dependence on OPEC oil. These numbers prove little has been done.

“In 2007, OPEC provided 44 percent of our oil. Last year we were still depending on foreign sources for 60 percent of our oil and depending on OPEC for 43 percent of our oil. With Iran threatening to block the Straits of Hormuz, and talk already beginning about getting our military involved, the threat continues.

“Oil is at about $100 per barrel. There is an abundance of oil in the world and, because global economic activity continues to be sluggish, there is no market reason for it to be so high. Earlier this month the Saudis declared that $100 oil is OPEC’s target price. It is geopolitics, and not market forces, that is dictating the price of oil.

“America has the cheapest energy in the world, and we should use it to bring jobs and industries back to America. We’ve lost jobs overseas to cheaper labor. It’s time to reclaim them with cheaper energy.

“The Congress and the President should work together to build a strong, comprehensive, transportation focused energy plan to build a foundation for America’s economic recovery.”

In an article posted earlier this week, reporter Joseph Lazzaro notes that possible sanctions against Iran being considered by the European Union will undoubtedly lead to higher prices for crude oil on a global basis.

A closure of the Straight of  Hormuz, through which about one-sixth of the world’s oil flows, would send prices to stratospheric levels. Oil hit an all-time high of $147.27 barrel in 2007, during the leveraging bubble.

Lazzaro points out that domestic natural gas offers significant strategic advantages for the U.S. versus imported oil. In addition, it is less than one-fifth the price, based on the amount of energy it delivers.

[M]ore recently, natural gas has added another advantage: it’s cheaper. Natural gas fell 6.5 cents to $2.99 per million BTUs (MMBtu) — again pushing below major psychological support at $3. There’s 5.8 MMBTUs in a barrel per oil. Hence, at $101.55 per barrel, oil is 5.85 times more expensive than natural gas, for the same amount of energy.

Read more HERE.

According to the Iranian Students News Agency, the Iranian armed forces commander, Gen. Ataollah Salehi, issued the following statement:

“We warn this ship, which is considered a threat to us, not to come back, and we do not repeat our words twice,” Salehi said.

In addition, foreign ministers from the European Union are expected to meet later this month to discuss a proposed embargo of Iranian oil in an attempt to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program.

Read more HERE.

The golden age of natural gas is upon us. So writes the commodities editor of London’s Financial Times in Friday’s edition of the paper.

After reviewing ExxonMobil’s all-important annual study known as The Outlook for Energy, Javier Blas concludes that overall energy demand will be “reshaped by a continued shift” towards greener energy sources, particularly natural gas.

“Less-carbon-intensive fuels, particularly natural gas, gain market share, while coal peaks and begins a decline for the first time in modern history,” the report states. In short, from King Coal to King Gas.

As Blas notes, the conclusions of the report are not self-promotion by Exxon of its priorities and its resources; “the conclusions echo talk by many energy executives, who see a growing role for natural gas in years to come.”

Major investments in natural gas fields and the acquisition of companies with extensive natural gas reserves has been the norm for several years now, a point Blas details:

The increasing importance of natural gas is behind some of the tectonic shifts in the hydrocarbon industry, including Royal Dutch Shell’s efforts to brand itself as a gas rather than an oil company; Exxon’s acquisition of US gas producer XTO Energy for $25bn last year; and BHP Billiton takeover in July of US-based gas developer Petrohawk for $12bn.

The much anticipated annual report, which was released on Thursday, is available HERE.

The complete article from the Financial Times is available HERE.