T. Boone Pickens appeared on CNBC to discuss his “three golden rules for energy independence” in America. He said we are taxing domestic natural gas at a higher rate than we tax imported diesel - propping up the OPEC cartel.

Second, he believes we should start selling off - over a 10 year period - about half of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Third, we should form a North American Energy Alliance with Mexico and Canada - “now you’re energy independent - you don’t need Middle East oil at all.”

Here’s a link to the entire interview on CNBC.

– The Pickens Team

T. Boone Pickens had an essay published in Politico, the highly regarded inside-the-beltway news organization, in which he says there is no free market in energy and the U.S. has got to have a plan to operate in a manipulated market.

“OPEC is a cartel,” Pickens wrote. “It controls prices with production. Since October, the Saudis have sharply curbed production, and consumers are seeing the impact at the pumps today.”

He also reminds readers that “70 percent of the world’s oil is controlled by state-owned oil companies. Or that the federal and state governments are constantly changing tax and regulatory policies - CAFE standards are a good example - to appease one interest group or another for whom the oil industry is an easy target.”

The way to drag the world - or at least the United States - back into a free market energy system is to “inject serious fuel competition into America’s transportation market.”

Seventy percent of the oil we consume is in the form of transportation fuels - gasoline for cars and light trucks and diesel for heavy-duty vehicles. Batteries are a difficult substitute for gasoline in passenger cars, but will not move an 18-wheeler.

The only substitute for imported diesel is natural gas for heavy-duty trucks.

“We now have enough recoverable natural gas to last about 100 years. By that time, I believe we’ll be far beyond today’s internal combustion engines,” Pickens says.

To read the entire essay in Politico, click HERE.

– The Pickens Team

Despite the fact that America’s domestic energy production has surged, the U.S. continues to send billions of dollars overseas to pay for imported oil. In February, we imported a whopping 267 million barrels.

The price tag for this dangerous dependency was more the $30 billion. That’s $30 billion in cold hard cash that was taken out of our domestic economy and used to build other countries’ infrastructure, fund their growth, and invest in their government programs. And, as we all know, some of those countries can’t stand the U.S. of A. (but they take our money anyway).

For instance, in December, more than one-third of our imported oil came from OPEC countries. The price tag for our OPEC imports in December was $12 billion. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Thanks to increased production of domestic oil and gas, America now enjoys some of the cheapest energy on earth. The President has called us “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” and rightly so. On the petroleum side, a barrel of oil from a U.S. well costs less $100.

But do you want to guess the average price of the 267 million barrels that we imported last month? $116 per barrel. Makes no sense, does it?

Read more HERE.

North America’s abundant natural gas reserves are being put to good use by Shell, which just announced plans to make liquefied natural gas (LNG) available to heavy-duty trucks and marine users in Ontario and in Louisiana. These two units will form the basis of LNG transport corridors in the Great Lakes and Gulf Coast regions.

“Natural gas is an abundant and cleaner-burning energy source in North America, and Shell is leveraging its LNG expertise and integrated strength to make LNG a viable fuel option for the commercial market,” said Marvin Odum, President, Shell Oil Company. “We are investing now in the infrastructure that will allow us to bring this innovative and cost-competitive fuel to our customers.”

This week’s announcement follows a similar decision that was made in the Alberta market in 2011.

Pending final regulatory permitting, these two new liquefaction units are expected to begin operations and production in about three years.

Read more HERE.

The nation’s largest railroad is taking a closer look at natural gas to power its locomotives.

BNSF Railway operates more than 1,000 trains a day on one of the largest freight rail transportation networks in North America. By the company’s own estimates, it is the second-biggest user of diesel in the country, after the U.S. Navy. But that might change.

The company’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal that BNSF Railway is taking a closer look at cleaner, cheaper domestic natural gas. And it has already begun working with manufacturers to design the appropriate locomotives.

“This could be a transformational event for our railroad,” BNSF Chief Executive Matt Rose told the Wall Street Journal.

Shifting to natural gas would “rank right up there” with the industry’s historic transition away from steam engines last century, Rose said.

The reason for the switch is a simple one. According to federal statistics, a gallon of diesel fuel cost an average of $3.97 last year. The equivalent amount of energy using natural gas cost 48 cents at industrial prices. This is because America’s superabundance of abundant supply of natural gas has caused natural-gas prices plummeting.

BNSF is working with manufacturers to develop a locomotive that can run on diesel and gas, which Mr. Rose said could lower fuel costs and help meet federal air-pollution standards that take effect in two years.

The new locomotives, which use liquefied natural gas, are being developed by units of General Electric Co. and Caterpillar Inc. Rose said preliminary tests indicated that LNG-powered trains could go farther before refueling than diesel trains and have comparable towing power.

On Monday during a live interview with Sean Hannity broadcast on FOX News, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush pointed out the pitfalls of America’s dangerous addiction to foreign oil. A possible solution? Running fleets of heavy-duty trucks on natural gas. Sound like a plan? Bush went as far to mention Boone Pickens by name.

First, when it came to defining the problem, the former governor nailed it:

“Last year, in spite of the boom, Sean, $300 billion of money went out to countries, most of which either hate us or are unstable and could learn to hate us in a heartbeat,” the former governor said.

Then he  singled out how recent developments in America’s energy portfolio are game-changers.

“… there are reserves in New York. There are significant gas reserves using this technology or new innovation, the fracking and horizontal drilling, which are old technologies applied in a new way. In California, certainly in Texas there’s an explosion of drilling that creates a tremendous opportunity, but what we need to do is to find new uses for natural gas.”

One of his conclusions? To take “Boone Pickens’ idea” and getting commercial trucks to use natural gas.

Heavy-duty trucks can now refuel in Alberta with liquefied natural gas (LNG). The LNG option became available last week at a LNG Shell Flying J station in Calgary. Ultimately, three LNG Shell Flying J Stations will serve the Calgary market.

The lead customer will be Alberta-based Bison Transport, which prides itself on using the latest technologies to operate one of the largest and most modern fleets in the Canadian trucking industry. Like many fleet operators, Bison plans to utilize cheaper, cleaner natural gas-powered trucks on a specific route:

“We’re operating these primarily in a dedicated lane between Calgary and Edmonton,” says Bison western operations VP Trevor Fridfinnson.

Late last month, Bison week took delivery of its 15th LNG-fueled Peterbilt 386 with Westport Innovations’ high pressure direct injection-modified 15-liter Cummins engine and fuel system. The Westport HD Peterbilt trucks have twin 120-gallon LNG tanks for 240 gallons per tractor, says Bison western operations VP Trevor Fridfinnson.

Read more HERE.

Rock Center with Brian Williams tasked Harry Smith with investigating the shale-gas revolution that is changing America. Naturally, one of Smith’s first stops was the Dallas office of Pickens Plan founder T. Boone Pickens.

“We have the cheapest energy in the world,” Pickens tells Smith. The legendary entrepreneur then makes an unexpected confession. “I never in my life thought that I would say that.” He later adds, “If you had asked me 10 years ago if this was going to happen, I would have laughed at you.”

Pickens sees America’s newly discovered natural gas bonanza as “the ultimate bargain.” Says Pickens, “If you go back and look, we built the first Industrial Revolution on cheap energy. That opportunity has come to us again. Don’t pass it up.”

Smith’s reporting demonstrates a few of the many ways that this revolution is already taking place.

In 2011, more than 800 gas wells were drilled. As a result, Smith reports, “tens of thousands of jobs were created,” including ones in communities that have long suffered from high unemployment, such as Youngstown, Ohio.

In the neighboring state of Pennsylvania, UGI employees are shown tapping into a gas main so that a local homeowner can change over from heating oil to natural gas. His reason? “Because of the price. It’s a no-brainer. It’s a lot cheaper,” says the homeowner.

Why is U.S. natural gas so much cheaper? The answer is straightforward: supply. “Natural gas is so cheap because the United States has figured out how to tap into reservoirs so enormous the supply could last a century. Even two. You heard that right. Up to 200 hundred years,” Smith says.

Who else knows this? President Obama. “We, it turns out, are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas,” the president says.

Watch the Rock Center segment here.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that U.S. natural-gas production will continue to accelerate through 2040 with subsequent declines occurring slowly. Based on detailed research in and around North Texas’s Barnett Shale, the study concludes that 44 trillion cubic feet of natural gas will be recovered in the Barnett — more than three times what has been produced so far and about two years’ worth of U.S. consumption at current rates.

“We are looking at multi, multi decades of growth,” said Scott Tinker, director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas and a leader of the study.

The University of Texas is also examining shale formations in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Arkansas. This additional research has caused investigators to conclude that U.S. natural gas production won’t plateau until 2040.

According to the Journal, the study itself is considered landmark research in the field of U.S. energy resources because it looks at data from actual wells rather than relying on estimates.

The study, funded by the nonpartisan Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and performed by the University of Texas, examined 15,000 wells drilled in the Barnett Shale formation in northern Texas, mostly over the past decade. It is among the first to study the geology and economics of shale drilling, a relatively recent development made possible by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is pumped at high pressure into rocks to release gas.

Read more HERE.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle earlier this week, T. Boone Pickens singled out a disturbing phenomenon regarding America’s new found oil and gas reserves, one with serious ramifications for our economy.

Over the past year, as U.S. oil production has surged to an 18-year high, the Saudis have made a conscious decision to curtail their domestic oil production to a 19-month low. The result? Higher prices at the pump for U.S. consumers.

“OPEC is a cartel,” Pickens said. “They control prices with production. Since October, the Saudis have sharply curbed production, and consumers are seeing the impact at the pumps today.”

According to the Chronicle, the “U.S. can’t beat OPEC at its own game, and we shouldn’t try.” Instead, another possibility looms, one that Pickens proposed in a meeting at the Energy Department earlier this week.

But his latest proposal, which he outlined in a speech to the Energy Department on Tuesday, bears consideration. He wants to leverage recent increases in domestic oil and natural gas production to break OPEC’s grip over the U.S. economy.

In essence, the legendary energy executive is calling for “fuel competition,” especially for motor fuels. Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, natural gas is abundant and cheap, making natural gas the logical choice to bridge the gap between current transportation needs and the more viable renewable fuels we’ll need in the future.

“Natural gas is the answer,” Pickens said.

Read the full article in the Houston Chronicle HERE (subscription required).

Earlier this week, T. Boone Pickens joined a blue-chip roster of industry leaders and select government officials at the 2013 ARPA-E Energy Summit, which was held at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. The purpose of the annual gathering is to bring together thought leaders from academia, business, and government to discuss cutting-edge energy issues and facilitate relationships to help move technologies into the marketplace.

In addition to Pickens, some of the other speakers included Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, and SpaceX Founder Elon Musk.

Speaking to reporters, Pickens said that anyone who would reject the Keystone XL pipeline would be a “fool.” “[The oil sands are] gonna be produced. You aren’t going to change Canada,” he told the media.

“Let’s just assume the Canadians are going to produce the oil sands. Well, why would we be stupid enough to let it go to China? I mean now, [if] you want to go down as the dumbest crowd in history, it’s that you would let the oil from up there … to get out of your grasp,” Pickens said.

Independents, Republicans, and Democrats all agree that energy security should be a top priority for decision makers who are shaping our country’s foreign policy. According to the Gallup Group, securing adequate energy supplies was of high importance to Americans of all political persuasions as was preventing acts of terrorism and limiting nuclear proliferation.

The results are based on Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll, which was conducted Feb. 7-10 using a random sample of 1,015 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Gallup News reports empirical evidence about the world’s 7 billion citizens based on Gallup’s continuous polling in 160 countries. Gallup’s 2,000 professionals deliver services at client organizations, through the Web, and in nearly 40 offices around the world.

Read more HERE.

Today at New York City Hall, Boone joined Mayor Mike Bloomberg to unveil the city’s first mobile food truck fully-powered by compressed natural gas, Neapolitan Express. They put Boone to work slinging pizzas while showcasing the benefits of using natural gas as a transportation fuel.

In January, 2013 the United States imported 304 million barrels of petroleum at a total cost of $34.3 billion. The amount of oil imports was 54% of the total we used.

Over 70% of oil is used as a transportation fuel in the form of gasoline for most cars and light trucks or diesel for heavy-duty trucks and other vehicles.

Over the course of 2012 we imported a total of 3.9 billion barrels at a cost of $434 billion. To put this in perspective, the amount of money being cut from the Fiscal Year 2013 federal budget under the terms of the sequester is $85 billion - one-fifth of the amount we spent on foreign oil last year.