Pickens Plan pointers

The plan offers a detailed solution for ending U.S. dependence on foreign oil, which costs the country $700 billion per year. It calls for investing in power generation from domestic renewable resources such as wind and using the nation’s abundant supplies of natural gas as a transportation fuel, replacing more than one-third of imported oil and saving more than $230 billion a year.

Building wind facilities in a corridor from the Texas Panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.

Natural gas is significantly less expensive than gasoline or diesel. In places like Utah and Oklahoma, prices are less than $1 a gallon equivalent.

Natural gas is the country’s second-largest energy resource, and 98 percent of gas used in the United States is from North America. But 70 percent of oil used here is purchased from foreign nations.

Natural gas is one of the cleanest, safest and most useful forms of energy for residential, commercial and industrial use.

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