14th January 2010

The US imported 63 percent of its oil, or 4.35 billion barrels in 2009, sending nearly $265bn, or $502,473 per minute, to foreign governments, according to energy tycoon T Boone Pickens, based on the latest figures from the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA).

‘Another year went by, another $265bn siphoned out of America’s struggling economy, and we still haven’t adopted a real energy plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,’ said Pickens. ‘But I believe we’re closer than ever to passing legislation in Congress that will move us toward using our own domestic resources instead of foreign oil -a promise every president has made over the past 40 years and that this one will finally have the potential to keep. The bipartisan NAT GAS Act would incentivize Americans to make use of the only abundant domestic alternative to foreign oil: natural gas. Urge Congress to pass this bill immediately; our economic and national security are at stake.’

The Act was introduced in the House of Representatives on 1 April 2009 and has 127 bipartisan cosponsors. The Senate version of this bill was introduced on 8 July 2009 as a bipartisan bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Robert Menendez and Senator Orrin Hatch.

A study released in June by the Potential Gas Committee, a group of academics and industry specialists supported by the Colorado School of Mines, estimates that the US has more than 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, the only available source that could immediately replace foreign oil as a transportation fuel.

In May 2008 Pickens announced plans a wind farm in the Texas panhandle. This week he announced that he had halved his turbine order with GE to 333 turbines, which would now be deployed in Canada and Minnesota.

Copyright © 2010 NewNet  To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.newenergyworldnetwork.com