Utah Governor Gary Herbert welcomed his peers to the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association (WGA), which was held this year in Park City, Utah. Given that much of governors’ focus was on energy solutions for their respective states, it was only fitting that T. Boone Pickens delivered the gathering’s opening remarks.
“When you’re buying oil from OPEC, you’ve got to know that part of what you pay for the oil goes to the Taliban. So I think we have been very stupid in paying for both sides of the war,” Pickens told the WGA convention at the Montage Deer Valley hotel.
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Pickens also said “that America would also be wise to use more oil from friendly Canada and Mexico, including approving the controversial Keystone pipeline from Canada.”
“I’m for anything that’s not OPEC,” he said. “Those people don’t like us. They hate us. And we have people next door who are our friends. What we have is 250 billion barrels of oil available to the United States in Canada,” which he said is the same size as oil reserves claimed by Saudi Arabia.
The Canadian ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, told the governors that his country is “all in on energy security in North America and energy sustainability.”
Doer added he has been surprised at how difficult it has been to gain approval for the Keystone pipeline. “It’s easier to put Crown Royal [whiskey] in a pipeline to Texas than it is oil.”
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