Published on: Wednesday, October 21, 2009

By Brian Hooks

Long-time Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens spoke to a crowd of more than 100 in the Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland on Friday morning. Pickens made headlines during the 2008 Presidential campaign when he proposed an energy plan for the winning candidate that is reliant on natural gas and wind turbines instead of imported petroleum.

“I can get to the finish line, at my age ... but [younger generations] are going to have to come to grips with the problem,” Pickens said. He turned to SGA President Steve Glickman, seated in the audience, “All of you are, Steve.”

Pickens made the campus visit a day before meeting with congressional legislators in the nation’s capital. “I’m in Washington, it seems, almost every week and we’re very close to getting something done,” said Pickens.

Pickens said after the “bloody battle” for health care, he thinks it will be a great time for President Obama to mandate energy independence. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., has worked closely on the energy proposal, according to Pickens.

“The security issue for America is the same. It’s just the pain [of high prices] is not as huge as it was a year ago,” said Pickens. “When you have cheap oil, you tend to say, ‘Well, leave it alone until it becomes a crisis.’ And I don’t think we should do that.”

Pickens entered the oil business in 1951 at a company called Phillips Petroleum Co. in Oklahoma. Five years later, Pickens founded his own independent company, Mesa Petroleum, which he led for 40 years. Mesa produced 3 trillion cubic feet of gas and 150 million barrels of oil from 1964 to 1996.

Pickens noted that President Nixon said the U.S. would go from 24 percent imported oil, to zero by the end of the ‘70s. According to an article by Forbes Magazine, the U.S. net import of oil was about 43 percent of total consumption in 1979.

“I started to become aware that the media ... never pinned one of these politicians down and said, ‘You told us we would not be importing any oil by the end of the seventies.’”

According to statistics from the Energy Information Administration, about 58 percent of petroleum used in the U.S. in 2008 was imported.

Pickens was adamant about not making business with disruptive nations, saying, “Our credibility has suffered in the past 10 years. One reason is the fact that we rely on countries that are not friendly to us for our oil.”

Pickens said he met with President Obama and told him that he finds his mission to have 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road in 10 years laughable. There are 250 million vehicles in the U.S. and 10 million are added annually. When Pickens brought this to the president’s attention, Obama said, “That’s not very many, is it?”

Pickens said a 2007 Department of Energy study found 200,000 megawatts of wind energy could be generated in the quarter from Texas to Canada. This would also create about 3.4 million jobs in the next ten years, according Pickens. The DOE also estimates that this energy could supply as much as 20 percent of the country’s annual electricity consumption.

H.R. 1835, also known as the “NAT GAS” Act, is the bill being proposed by the House, and will provide incentives for businesses and consumers to switch from foreign fuel to domestic electricity and natural gas.

Glickman announced the creation of the T. Boone Pickens Scholarship of $1,000 for a deserving University of Maryland student.

So far, 1.6 million people have signed up in approval for the Pickens Plan on /www.pickensplans.com/.