Callum

Obama's Green Promise

Toml2068 wrote:"The author above totally omitted the fact that Pickens plan was to replace Natural gas with wind power in electric power generation thus freeing it up for transporation. Not a minor omission."

A valid point Tom, but if you could replace all the gas fired electricity generation with alternative sources it still wont last very long. America's current energy usage in million tonnes of oil equivalent are:
Oil - 943.1
Natural Gas - 595.7
Coal - 573.7
Nuclear - 192.1
Hydro - 56.8

If you diverted all the natural gas to use as motor fuel and only replaced the 2/3 of the oil consumption that is imported you would still need 628 tonnes oil equivalent which is larger than current consumption. Given that current Proven Reserves stand at 10.3 years under current use, if diverted it would be 9.8 years. That is still short-term in my books.