US energy policy results in high prices

T. Boone Pickens:

America is sending nearly $1 million a minute out of the country to pay for foreign oil.

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.

But, OPEC has determined that $100 is the price they need to continue to pay off their people and keep the Royal families in 747s, so it is not the free market, but geopolitical maneuvering that is controlling the price of oil.

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.

The fact of the matter is that you cannot control our energy future without a comprehensive energy plan, and one that focuses on transforming American transportation. Transportation accounts for nearly two-thirds of all crude oil use.

Certainly there is a role for alternatives in power generation, and Florida has emerged as a leader in that arena as home to the largest wind power generation in the nation, Next Era Energy, a division of Florida Power & Light.

If you are going to transform transportation in America, we have to find alternatives to foreign oil/diesel/gasoline. We should focus on heavy duty trucks and fleet vehicles in America, and begin moving them with natural gas, either liquefied or compressed. Sure, I’m all for the electric car, but batteries won’t move an 18-wheeler.

Targeting heavy duty trucks and fleet vehicles — about 8.5 million in all — could cut our OPEC oil dependence in half in 10 years or less.

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The US has the gas to fuel these trucks.  It is installing the infrastructure to get it too the truckers.  The next big step is rigs that can use the fuel.  We also need to get Big Green out of the way of he production of oil and gas in the US.