It is still a start. No, one strategy should be used. Natural gas has not gone up in Europe, and you still have to remember that we can produce our own. What other opritunities are there for mass transit??? I do agree with you that we need other technology but not in the transportation sector. Natural Gas hybrid is were it is at.
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How to Wean the U.S. Off Oil
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Fortunately, there's a ready answer. Natural gas already comes into many Americans' homes for heating and cooking purposes. Add a simple compressor, and they could start using it to refill their cars overnight in their garages. Of course, that would require having a car that can run on natural gas. And that points to the big job ahead for the country: creating such a fleet, especially for mass transport.
Seventy percent of the oil used in the United States is for transportation, and a large percentage of that is used in moving goods via 18-wheelers on interstate highways. If major trucking companies were to replace vehicles using diesel with trucks using liquefied natural gas, it would provide an immediate and dramatic impact on America's oil imports. One million trucks running on natural gas would reduce oil imports by about 25 percent. In fact, any fleet—municipal vehicles, buses, express-delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, regional-hub operations—that goes to the same barn every night could easily be upgraded to natural gas with a relatively minuscule investment in fueling infrastructure.
The new administration should show leadership by ordering that all new U.S. government vehicles must use natural gas instead of gasoline or diesel. Such a move would send a clear signal to all the major manufacturers of cars and trucks that Washington is serious about natural gas. Look what happened when President George W. Bush declared a bias toward ethanol. Ethanol plants sprang up like toadstools after a rainstorm all over the American Breadbasket.
Using natural gas for urban vehicles has the additional advantage of being much cleaner for the environment than either gasoline or diesel. Whether you are a believer in man-made global warming or not, it makes sense to start putting fewer particulates into the atmosphere.
Finally, natural gas is between a third and a half less expensive than gasoline or diesel fuel. When oil prices spiked last summer, trucking companies started starving on $5-a-gallon diesel fuel. Natural gas has the following advantages: it is cleaner, cheaper, abundant, available right now and a 100 percent domestic energy source.
Making the changes outlined above won't be easy. Washington lobbyists will work hard to preserve the status quo. But America can't afford to continue paying the economic and security costs imposed by its reliance on foreign oil. It's time for a change.
Pickens is chairman of BP Capital.
© 2008
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