PickensPlan.com: Slash America’s thirst for imported oil ($700 billion a year)

Contributed by: Stockmasters Staff (http://www.thestockmasters.com) -

If only T. Boone Pickens could run the country for a year. We import 70 percent of this country’s oil. This country can be brought to our knees if the oil was cut off. Pickens has a plan, and he wants the world to know. Good stuff fellow Masters.

1st - Pickens Website: http://www.pickensplan.com/

IT’S TIME TO STOP AMERICA’S ADDICTION TO FOREIGN OIL

America is in a hole and it’s getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year – four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.

On January 20, 2009, a new President gets sworn in. If we’re organized, we can convince Congress to make major changes towards cleaner, cheaper and domestic energy resources.

To get this done, I need your help. Check out the plan. If you think it’s worth fighting for, please join our effort.

2nd – An article from BizJournals.com on the subject:

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2008/07/07/daily48.html

Famous Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens got a standing ovation Thursday after he rolled out his plan to wean the nation off imported oil.

Pickens launched the plan July 8 via a $58 million advertising and web campaign. Its website is PickensPlan.com.

The website received 170,000 hits in its first two days, according to Pickens, who was the keynote luncheon speaker Thursday at the Colorado Oil & Gas Association’s annual seminar on natural gas. The luncheon was held at the Colorado Convention Center.

Pickens’ goal is simple: To slash America’s thirst for imported oil, which costs $700 billion a year.

“We have to cut down on the $700 billion a year that’s going out of this country,” Pickens said. “We import 70 percent of this country’s oil. This country can be brought to our knees if the oil was cut off.”

In 1970, the U.S. imported 24 percent of its oil. By 1990 it was 42 percent, and today it’s almost 70 percent, Pickens said.

“It’s the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. We can’t afford it,” he said.

Pickens aims to cut imports of crude oil by reducing the demand for gasoline and diesel for cars and trucks.

The U.S. should switch to the use of natural gas-powered vehicles for a chunk of the national fleet, Pickens said.

“Natural gas is cleaner, it’s cheaper, it’s abundant and it’s domestic,” Pickens said.

Natural gas generates about 22 percent of the country’s electricity. If most of that natural gas was diverted from electricity generation to fuel for cars and trucks, and if wind turbines generate that electricity instead, that would cut demand for imported oil by about $300 billion a year at today’s prices, Pickens said.

“The answer is wind. We have more wind than anyone else in the world and we’re not using it,” he said.

Pickens said it can be done if the nation — and its political leaders — believe energy is a national crisis that can be fixed.

He said he’s willing to sit down with the presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, to discuss the plan. He’s also taken it to the White House as well as legendary Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett — who told him “Go do it. The country needs it,” Pickens said.

The plan calls for a series of four ads to be rolled out in the next several weeks, and Pickens hopes a grassroots campaign will pick it up from there.

“In one bold stroke, Boone Pickens has put forward a practical, sensible idea for making a big dent in our dependence on foreign oil with technology that already exists today,” Meg Collins, the president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, in a statement.

“I hope his proposal gets serious consideration by the public, the White House and Congress.”