Gasoline at $2.50 a Gallon Is ‘Not Realistic’: Pickens

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’splan to lower the price of gas to $2.50 a gallon nationally by opening federal lands to drilling is “not realistic,” T. Boone Pickens told CNBC Tuesday.

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“I don’t know any expert that thinks you can get $2.50 gasoline. I don’t know where that comes from,” said the Texas natural-gas mogul and CEO of BP Capital Management. Pickens said he hadn’t read the plan and was going on Gingrich’s recent appearance on CNBC.

The price of gasand oil in the U.S. is the “cheapest energy in the world,” he noted, adding that he doesn’t understand why politicians won’t make that clear.

“Our natural gas price is $2.35. Beijing’s is $16, Middle East $15, Europe $13,” Pickens said. Oil is also cheaper here, trading around $106 a barrel, compared with Brent North Sea of about $123, he said.

“I don’t know what we’re complaining about. What we don’t do is, we don’t explain it to the American people. I’m not sure whether the politicians don’t understand energy or they don’t want to talk about it,” Pickens said.

Pickens said he is “frustrated” that the legislation he backs, which would put more natural gas into commercial trucks, has gone nowhere in Congress.

“Who controls the price of oil? OPEC does. If you want to go to work on the price of oil and get gasoline prices down you have to attack transportation,” which uses 70 percent of the oil imported every day, he said.

“Nobody mentions that. You put natural gas in there, which is the cheapest energy commodity today, into heavy-duty trucks you can bring down the price of diesel gasoline,” he said, adding, “I don’t understand why they don’t understand.”