Natural Gas Plan Gaining Support in Congress: Pickens
A proposal to use more US natural gas instead of foreign oil is making "great strides" and will likely be passed by Congress by year-end, T. Boone Pickens, founder and CEO of BP Capital told CNBC.
“This President has the opportunity to reduce foreign imports, the only President that we've ever had in America that can do it, and we have to do it with our resources,” Pickens said in a live interview. “We are so overwhelmed with nat gas reserves today—we have twice as much as nat gas as the Saudis have oil.”
Pickens is expected to testify at House heaing on "Energy Tax Incentives Driving the Green Job Economy," discussing the energy reform and his support of the bi-partisan nat gas act under consideration in both the House and the Senate.
Pickens has invested $62 million of his own money in natural gas projects during the past two years.
Pickens said the government needs to provide tax credits and incentives to the trucking industry for them to help purchase new trucks that use natural gas.
“We’ve got to give them $65,000 (for) a new truck,” he said. “It’s going to take us seven years to do eight million trucks. If we do that, it’s going to give us $100 billion back into this country that we don’t buy foreign oil with. And every billion that we spend, we create 100,000 jobs.”
“So on $7 billion, we can create 700,000 jobs,” he added.
With the global economy improving and demand growing from countries such as China, Pickens said, the US will see oil reach $95 a barrel by the end of the year.
“If we continue on that same trail—now we’re importing about 68 percent of our oil—in 10 years, we will be importing about 75 percent of our oil and we will pay $300 a barrel for it.”