Pickens on natural gas: You can't beat it

The oilman talks tough about Washington, the Iraq war, and our energy future.

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Texas oil magnate T. Boone Pickens may have postponed his plans to build the world’s largest wind farm in Texas, but he’s come closer to accomplishing another goal: Pickens visited the nation’s capitol last week to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) introduce a bipartisan bill designed to bring natural gas vehicles to the mainstream American market.

Pickens’s Washington, D.C., trip marked the conclusion of his “Pickens Plan” — a much-discussed yearlong crusade to end America’s dependence on foreign oil. Now convinced that natural gas’s low price makes it more viable than expensive wind technology, Pickens stopped by Fortune’s offices to reflect on his $60 million campaign to promote alternative sources of energy. The takeaway message: Natural gas must replace petroleum. “It’s cleaner, it’s cheaper, it’s ours, and it’s abundant,” Pickens told Fortune staffers. “And boy, you can’t beat that.”

Excerpts follow:

On Washington’s failures…

“Washington did not understand the problem [with relying on foreign oil], and they don’t understand energy. They don’t understand what it’s doing to the country, they don’t understand the addiction. It just kind of goes along because of one thing: For forty years you had no leadership and you had cheap oil. So what’d you do? You keep using more and more oil….

“When we kicked off [the Pickens Plan] this time last year, you had $4.11 gasoline, which helped the kick-off. And you were importing 68% of the oil in this country. If you’re going to pay $140 a barrel, it’s going to cost you $700 billion…. Now, fortunately, that $140 didn’t hold up, and the price dropped. But it’s still the greatest transfer of wealth from one group to another group.”

Fortune