Pickens: Drilling isn't the answer

DALLAS - T. Boone Pickens, the famous Texas oilman, billionaire investor and energy evangelist, listened the other day to President Obama's plan to expand offshore oil and natural-gas drilling. He was not particularly impressed.

"It was kind of disappointing," Pickens said Thursday in the office of BP Capital L.P., the hedge fund at the center of his empire.

He's fine with offshore drilling. But he said that there were no substantial Atlantic oil reserves where Obama lifted a ban on drilling, and that untapped oil in Alaska would provide only a fraction of the nation's supplies. Neither would aim the country where Pickens said it needs to go - energy independence from America's "enemies" in OPEC.

The 82-year-old businessman and philanthropist has a plan, of course: the Pickens Plan, his relentless, self-funded crusade to displace foreign oil with domestic wind farms and natural gas - though wind has become less economical in the recession, and natural gas has become more prominent because of discoveries such as the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.

"This is our chance," Pickens said. "I think it's almost divine intervention that we had all this gas show up at this time in the deal."

Yes, yes, yes: His motives are not entirely altruistic - he has a dog in this hunt. He's an energy investor and chairman emeritus of Clean Energy Fuels Corp., formerly Pickens Fuel Corp., which owns and operates fueling stations for natural-gas vehicles.

But Pickens said there was more to his campaign than financial interest.

"If I was trying to make money, I wouldn't spend $62 million going on there, and a helluva lot of time - I put 629 hours on a plane in 2009," Pickens said about his campaign. "So I think there's no question about my patriotism and sincerity about trying to get us on our own resource."

Pickens said he was inspired to act because every president since Richard Nixon has promised to make America energy-independent, yet oil imports have increased from 24 percent of the nation's supply in 1970 to nearly 70 percent now. The news media failed to hold the presidents accountable, he said.

So Pickens launched his crusade two years ago. He has spent 184 days on the road, visited 37 states and 82 cities, and bought ads to appeal to sympathizers to sign his petition and support the cause. More than 1.6 million have joined the Pickens Plan Army.

The media campaign alone consumes considerable time and energy. During an interview with The Inquirer, Pickens' public-affairs director, Jay Rosser, broke in so his boss could do a scheduled interview on speakerphone with Dylan Ratigan, a New York radio talk-show host.

Pickens told New York listeners he was mystified by the uproar gas drilling had caused in the Marcellus Shale region, where environmentalists oppose hydraulic fracturing (fracking), an extraction technology involving high-pressure injections of sand and drilling fluids into a well. The EPA recently announced it would study fracking.

"You've been fracking wells in Texas and Oklahoma for 50 years," Pickens said. "I've never heard anybody complain about your damaging the water. We're just amused that people in Pennsylvania and New York are crying about messing up their water."

At the radio interview's conclusion, Rosser congratulated Pickens for getting in multiple mentions of the Pickens Plan Web site, then hustled him off to the boardroom, where Pickens was about to record an interview on Bloomberg Television.

In the wood-paneled boardroom, where a map of the Marcellus was displayed prominently with other maps, Pickens' team of traders tracked energy and equity prices on a wall-size computer screen.

Pickens, master of the sound bite, watched himself on the screen saying the same thing he says to everyone: "Natural gas. It's cleaner, cheaper, and it's ours."

The Pickens Plan aims to persuade fleet owners to convert truck and buses from diesel to compressed natural gas. Fleets can be refueled from a central CNG station, and Pickens says a typical trash truck consumes as much fuel each year as 325 automobiles.

According to the national trade group Natural Gas Vehicles for America, natural gas-fueled automobiles emit 20 to 30 percent less greenhouse gas than diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles, as well as fewer particulates and other pollutants.

But CNG vehicles are more expensive - a natural-gas-fueled truck comes at a $50,000 premium over a conventional truck.

And so Pickens and Natural Gas Vehicles for America are lobbying for legislation now in Congress that would provide federal tax credits up to $32,000 per vehicle, an incentive to buy in.

Pickens said he had nothing against electric vehicles and hybrids - he just thinks it will take too much time for them to penetrate the market of 220 million vehicles in America to have much effect on petroleum consumption.

And electric vehicles don't enter into the equation when it comes to heavy trucks, the biggest consumers of motor fuel; there is currently no commercial battery-driven vehicle capable of powering a tractor-trailer rig.

"If you replace eight million 18-wheelers with natural gas, you have cut OPEC in half," Pickens said.

He clearly loves the spotlight and what celebrity can help one accomplish.

His office is decorated with mementos: framed magazine covers on which he appeared during his heyday as a corporate raider; a 10-foot satellite image of his vast West Texas ranch; formal photos with former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush; photos representing many causes to which he has donated a total of more than $750 million; the framed scorecard from when he shot an eagle on the 11th hole at the Augusta National Golf Club, where he is a member; a trophy from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth expressing gratitude for supporting its 2004 campaign against John Kerry.

But he hungers for something more out of life.

"I never was in the service," he said. "I was too young for World War II. The Korean War was my war, and I was married and had a child and I was deferred. And I never have felt real good about that. And then Vietnam, I was too old for Vietnam.

"Well, maybe this is my mission - to fix energy for America. I may get lucky and do it. You're bucking a lot of egos in Washington."