SAN ANTONIO — T. Boone Pickens included a stop in San Antonio Wednesday in his ongoing campaign to lessen the United States’ dependence on foreign oil.
The famed oil magnate has toured the country for the last year, preaching the seriousness of an impending energy crisis, as well as pushing his plan to use natural gas and other means to move the country toward energy independence.
“It’s going to be a problem for all of us, but we can solve it,” Pickens told the more than 700 people gathered at the Grand Hyatt for the San Antonio Rotary Club’s weekly meeting. “The solutions are pretty simple, and we do have the resources to solve it.”
Pickens’ stop in San Antonio comes a month after he was named Texan of the Year by the Texas Legislative Conference. He’ll be in New Braunfels at that conference in late March, likely to talk more about alternative energies and the need for oil autonomy.
He said the country currently imports 70 percent of its oil, at a cost that rose up to nearly $500 billion in 2008, $23 billion in December alone.
With only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves and as the largest global consumer, Pickens believes that the country’s appetite and the cost associated with it will only continue to grow — to a point that would eventually be untenable.
“We’ve never made an effort to solve the energy problem. We’ve always just said, ‘send us more oil,’” he said.
President-elect Barack Obama has said that he wishes for the U.S. to be independent of Middle Eastern oil in 10 years.
To achieve that, Pickens said the U.S. must harness the country’s wind and solar capabilities and fully tap into its natural gas reserves.
Texas and other western states, in particular, he said, are in a position to generate a wealth of solar and wind energy.
He estimated by replacing other energy sources with natural gas, that its use could lessen U.S. foreign consumption by 38 percent in 20 or 30 years. Pickens also praised natural gas as a viable transportation fuel to use while other technologies evolve to power the country’s 6.5 million freight trucks, as well as cars. He said he recently pitched an idea to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to convert 350,000 trucks to natural gas, a move he speculated would immediately reduce oil dependency by more than 5 percent.
“We just have to get people in Washington to understand the problem,” he said.
Wednesday’s stop was one of many over the last year, as the native Oklahoman said he’s spent some $58 million already promoting his energy plan to students, political leaders and civic organizations around the country.
“T. Boone Pickens is doing a great service to the nation with his rallying cry to help us become free from our over-dependence on foreign oil,” San Antonio Rotary President Patrick Tobin said. “For Rotary Club to be a part of spreading that message, it’s very special and helps us fulfill our goal of educating the people in San Antonio and in New Braunfels about the needs of our country.”
Rusty Brockman, director of economic development for the Greater New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce, said the Austin-San Antonio corridor is a ripe area to develop many of the technologies Pickens touted, with plenty of sun, wind and water resources. With efforts already under way in New Braunfels and its surrounding communities to be more energy-forward, he said the Hill Country could play an important role in Pickens’ plan to rid the U.S. of foreign energy sources.
“He brings so much knowledge to the table, and to be able to sit down and listen to his plan, it gives you a whole different perspective on what we should be doing to back away from our dependence on foreign oil,” Brockman said. “It all makes a lot of sense because we’ve already seen some of these problems he’s talked about jump up and grab us over the last 10 or 15 years.”
