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Thursday 10/7/2008 Page: 2
Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas investor, has unveiled a national energy plan designed to cut US dependence on foreign oil. The country was "very close to a disaster" because it imported nearly 70% of its oil, he said. Mr Pickens said he had launched an advertising campaign for his plan at a cost so far of about $US10 million ($A10.48 million). "I am going to give a solution to the trap we have put ourselves in," said Mr Pickens, who is developing a 4000-megawatt wind farm in Texas.
The problem is that we are buying $700 billion of foreign oil a year. That number is not going to stay at $700 billion. It's going to move up." Mr Pickens, founder and chairman of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC, made his comments as Congress has been investigating how much speculators have contributed to oil's 92% surge over the past year. Mr Pickens said the gains were because global demand exceeded supply. "It isn't driven by speculation," said Mr Pickens, who manages funds linked to energy commodities and equities.
He said presidential candidates had failed to tackle the energy crisis into which the US had drifted since the 1970s. "I think it's the No. 1 issue in this presidential campaign;' Mr Pickens said. "This is like a war as far as I'm concerned:' The use of natural gas powered vehicles could reduce oil imports by 38%, said Mr Pickens, who is the largest shareholder of Clean Energy Fuels, a natural gas supplier for bus and truck fleets.
Wind could generate 200,000 megawatts of power by 2010 and account for 22% of the electricity supply, he said. The US Department of Energy said in May that wind could account for 20% of the nation's power supplies by 2030.
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