Chris Carney, and T. Boone Pickens target foreign oi

Published August 09, 2008 05:08 am - It’s like the setup for some politically witty punch line: So a Democratic Congressman and a Texas billionaire oil tycoon walk into a bar...

Carney, tycoon target foreign oil

By Damian Gessel
The Daily Item

MIFFLINBURG — It’s like the setup for some politically witty punch line: So a Democratic Congressman and a Texas billionaire oil tycoon walk into a bar...

Actually, it wasn’t a bar. U.S. Rep. Chris Carney, D-10 of Dimock, talked recently with T. Boone Pickens — BP businessman, philanthropist and supporter of alternative energy — over a cup of coffee. Blowing curls of steam away from their cups, they chatted over heady matters.

Namely, what to do about the fact America is wildly dependent on foreign oil.

Pickens, at 80, is as staunch a Republican as there is. He’s a private sector man through and through. Carney hasn’t yet cracked 50, is a professor and military man turned politician. And a Democrat.

But on the matter of oil independence, they think surprisingly alike, Carney said Friday. Both favor a conservatively balanced approach (start drilling on U.S. shores for oil to tide America over until the big switch and make use of clean coal technology), but both believe that with a little roll-up-your-sleeves American ingenuity, the country can ween itself off foreign crude.

“I don’t see any reason why we can’t someday be the Saudi Arabia of energy,” Carney told a roomful of residents at a town hall talk in Mifflinburg Friday. “We just need the political will to do it.”

Carney wants the United States to turn to every available alternate energy source, from nuclear to solar.

“Everything,” he said, “is on the table.”

Pickens just ponied up $10 billion of his own money to build a wind mill farm in west Texas. His plan is to generate enough wind energy to reduce America’s estimated $700 billion annual dependence on foreign oil, thereby freeing up natural gas for transportation.

Here’s a snippet from Carney and Pickens’ coffee session:

Pickens, to Carney: “You’re sitting on top of 2 trillion gallons of natural gas.”

Carney: “Is that a lot?”

Pickens: “Hell yes, that’s a lot!”

Turns out, Pennsylvania is riding on the second-largest store of natural gas in the country, Carney said.

Carney and Pickens may be different in every other way, but they both say they see the writing on the wall — and it isn’t written in oil, the congressman said.