By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) - Texas oil investor T. Boone Pickens called on Tuesday for a massive switch to natural gas as a transportation fuel and a boost in wind power in a plan aimed at reducing U.S. foreign oil dependence by a more than a third.
The Pickens Plan, which includes exploiting domestic natural gas supplies by tapping new areas like East Texas and Appalachia, could replace 38 percent of U.S. oil imports, he said.
"U.S. natural gas can replace foreign oil. It's the only natural resource we have that can do that," Pickens said during a press event for the release of his energy plan.
The 10-year plan would reduce the U.S. annual oil import bill of $700 billion, at oil prices of $140 a barrel, by hundreds of billions of dollars, he said.
His plan comes as U.S. consumers who have already been hit by the credit and housing crunches are now facing record gasoline prices as oil prices rally on rising demand from developing countries and violence in the Middle East.
Pickens, a life-long Republican, hopes to discuss the plan with both U.S. presidential candidates. He is launching a television advertising campaign for the plan worth tens of millions of dollars.
Earlier this year, Pickens announced he would spend $10 billion to build the world's biggest wind farm in Texas that should start generating power by 2011.
When asked if his plan is a way to ensure his investments would him even richer, the 80-year-old billionaire said he's not concerned about making still more money.
CLOSEST THING TO WAR
Pickens' vision has two steps.
First, investors would have to boost development of wind farms, particularly in what he called the U.S. wind corridor, a slice of the country from Texas to North Dakota. It's an "unbelievable asset that's not been touched," he said.
The extra wind power, according to the plan, would replace the natural gas the country burns to generate power. Currently the country gets 22 percent of its power from natural gas.
Then, the freed-up natural gas could then be used to power vehicles, but the country would have to convert a large share of its vehicles to run on compressed natural gas.
Pickens said the cost savings would be convincing as his plan would reduce oil prices "substantially." But he stopped short of predicting how much.
"You never know how much demand will rise in places like China and India," said Pickens, who heads the hedge fund BP Capital. "I don't think we'll ever see prices below $100 a barrel."
Analysts have said sending wind power generated from the heart of the country to the coasts could required investments of hundred of billions of dolllars in power lines.
Pickens acknowledged the plan has some some high hurdles.
Another barrier would be that a new system of natural gas-filling stations would have to be built and cars would have to be converted to run on the fuel.
The government would need to provide leadership to create power transmission corridors from the heart of the country to the coasts, he said. The effort would have to be comparable to the interstate highway system former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower created during the Cold War to improve the mobility of the military, Pickens said.
"This comes down to the closest thing to war, while not having war," Pickens said about the imperative for the U.S. to tap its own natural resources to reduce its foreign oil habit.
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