ORLANDO, Fla., Feb. 15, 2010—Even T. Boone Pickens can’t believe he’s saying it, but maybe one way Americans can stop shipping their oil money to unfriendly oil-producing countries is for the U.S. government to buy a competitive company like Exxon, Chevron or Conoco.

“Seventy percent of the oil in the world today is controlled by state-owned oil companies,” Pickens told NADA members. “We have no state-owned oil company. … I’m saying, is there a need?” If you’re going to play the game—and the U.S. does by importing nearly 70 percent of the oil it uses (one quarter of the world’s production), then you need to acquire a team, he said.

A national oil company isn’t part of his Pickens Plan to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil, but it’s just the kind of bold thinking he believes can help meet his overriding goal: “To get us off OPEC oil, or to at least to get us to a level where we can negotiate.”

Pickens described his plan as a pragmatic mixture of renewable wind and solar energy and power from the nation’s 4,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the world’s largest deposits. He’s seen a core tenet of the plan at work in two California projects where natural-gas engines replaced diesel power in trash trucks and buses. He thinks that bills in both the U.S. House and Senate have the sponsors needed to pass—and he’s made a bet that the bills will pass before Memorial Day.

 
When it comes to the future car fuels, “I believe the battery is where we’re going, but you’ve got to watch out that we don’t replace Saudi oil with Chinese batteries,” Pickens said.

Hydrogen would work, “but it’s expensive and difficult to deal with.”

Is ethanol an alternative? “You use more energy to make ethanol than ethanol is worth,” Pickens said, “but at least ethanol is American.” And it’s politically viable, too, he said. He told of criticizing ethanol in a meeting on Capitol Hill, and having then Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole tell him how Washington works: “Boone, there are 21 farm states with 42 senators. And if 42 senators want ethanol, they’re going to have it.”

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