T. Boone Pickens is a Texas billionaire who made his money in oil and in corporate takeovers. He is a very vocal proponent of finding an energy plan for the United States (U.S.) to deal with the upcoming shortages in oil, as it is a limited natural resource. He communicates in his TED talk his alarm over the movement of enormous wealth from the U.S. to the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) nations with oil purchases and the negative impact this has on country security, requiring U.S. military forces to focus on keeping oil shipping lanes open. The central proposition of his talk is that the energy plan for the U.S. should include the use of a “bridge fuel” between current oil consumption and the ultimate inevitable shift to an alternative fuel source such as nuclear, wind, or solar. He proposes that this bridge fuel be natural gas (Pickens, 2012).
An underlying assumption of Pickens speech is that U.S. consumption of oil is too high. There is no controversy in the statement that the U.S. consumes a lot of oil. Pickens says that the U.S. uses 25% of oil that is refined but comprises a mere 4% of the world’s population and this is not a sustainable rate of consumption (Pickens, 2012). Although oil is used for many products, including asphalt, fertilizer, feedstock, polyurethane, and plastics, Pickens is correct that much of the oil is utilized in transportation. Despite attempts to develop alternative fuel sources for transportation, such as ethanol, these efforts are still not impacting the amount of oil used by the consumer. It remains that consumer oil consumption in the U.S. is very high and Pickens is correct that this situation will not be sustainable even to the near future.
His suggestion of a bridge fuel, in particular, natural gas is at least a partial result of his failure to get wind energy to be an economically feasible business. In his speech he claims that he lost 150 million dollars in that attempt. A drop in natural gas prices precipitated that failure. The low natural gas prices meant that the wind energy was going to be too expensive to be profitable, given the current technology available. The reason why the natural gas prices dropped was because there was a change in the regulations about how natural gas could be obtained. In particular, a process called “fracking,” which is controversial for its possible negative environmental impact, was approved for use. After the change in regulations, natural gas was easier to produce, so the price went down. Pickens evidentially has decided that if he can’t beat natural gas, he might as well join it, thus he is now a vocal proponent of using that resource to solve the diminishing oil reserves problem (Pickens, 2012).
Although not discussed in depth in Pickens’ TED talk, no adoption of natural gas as a major fuel source will occur with addressing the issues with fracking. Pickens does make many claims about the enormous amounts of natural gas available within the U.S. for use. It is highly likely that these estimates include amounts that are produced by the fracking process. However, it is unlikely that those in the U.S. will be willing to tolerate environmental issues associated with this kind of natural gas extraction as it possible that this process is a potential environmental, safety, and health hazard. Pickens dismisses this concern in his speech in a very offhand way, which does undermine confidence in the other assertions he makes concerning the use of natural gas (Pickens, 2012).
In his speech, Pickens urges a focus on converting trucks to natural gas. He states that this amount of change will have a measurable impact on the amount of oil that the U.S. must purchase from the OPEC nations, an estimated 60% reduction (Pickens, 2012). This approach is a good one to promote natural gas use with the public, as it requires change in behavior for only a very small part of the population – those that are in the trucking business. A further appealing part of the use of natural gas is that burning it is a benefit to air quality, as noted by Pickens, natural gas as a fuel produces less carbon dioxide than burning oil or coal.
Thus, to counter the fracking issues there are two solid arguments for the general public to support the use of natural gas. First, they will not have to change their behavior in order to make a measurable impact on the use of oil in the U.S. and, second, that change is expected to have a positive change on air quality. Of course, this puts the onus for the change on the trucking industry. Despite the investment costs in their fleet to convert to natural gas, if it saves enough money over oil in the long run, it is likely that some change will occur. However, it remains to be seen whether the volume of change from diesel to natural gas needed to impact OPEC oil purchases will be achieved using Pickens’ plan.
References
Pickens, T. (2012, March). Let’s transform energy – with natural gas. [Video file]. TED.com. Retrieved from <http://www.ted.com/talks/t_boone_pickens_let_s_transform_energy_with_natural_gas.html>
