Let me say, at the top, that I have worked for, around, and with T. Boone Pickens since he first introduced the Pickens Plan in the summer of 2008. The plan has evolved as new data have been released, especially with regard to the astonishing amount of natural gas that can be economically recovered from shale deposits under the continental United States. I was – I won’t type “shocked” and sound like Claude Rains in “Casablanca” – but I was disturbed to read Tim Carney’s piece vilifying Pickens and a company he largely owns, Clean Energy Fuels, for pushing to get the NAT GAS Act bills through the U.S. House and Senate.
Pickens is not a newcomer to the oil and gas business. At 83, he has been in the industry as a degreed geologist and businessman for well over a half century. In 2009, a report released by the Potential Gas Committee, in conjunction with the Colorado School of Mines, first demonstrated that natural gas should no longer be considered a scarce natural resource whose use should be closely monitored and husbanded.
