Texas energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens said his plan to cut US oil use by converting cars to run on natural gas after boosting wind and solar power hasn’t suffered despite a 23 per cent drop in crude prices since July.

“Why should it? You can’t change something in a matter of a few weeks,” Pickens said in a telephone interview. “We’re importing way too much oil, whether it’s $120 or $150 a barrel, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Pickens revealed the plan – which envisions spending billions on turbines and transmission lines to tap the country’s  blustery corridor from Texas to North Dakota – and launched an advertising campaign last month.
A massive move to wind power would divert natural gas from being burned for power and make it available to run vehicles, according to the plan. It also calls for more drilling of domestic oil.
Crude oil briefly fell below $113 a barrel, after hitting over $147 on July 11, as high fuel prices dampened demand in the US, the world’s thirstiest consumer of motor fuel. The US Department of Transportation said this week vehicle travel declined for the eighth month in a row.
“All of those things help, and it’s good for the country for them to happen, but you still have to do something about your (oil) imports, which are still almost 70 per cent,” said Pickens, who has met with governors from wind corridor states Oklahoma, Kansas and Montana.
Pickens said oil prices may drop even further, to $110, sometime in the next few weeks, but won’t dip below $100, and that the price will dog the US for decades unless it adopts a plan and sticks to it. The US dropped plans for solar and wind power after petroleum prices fell in the 1980s.
“In the past that’s what happened when the price went down, all the plans stopped,” he said.
The lifelong Republican hopes to make energy the top issue in the US presidential campaign. He has not come out in favour of either candidate yet.