DENVER – OK … he bought everybody in The Big Tent lunch today. Pickens sponsored a meal for all the bloggers here catered by Wahoo’s Fish Tacos (I had a steak burrito). Later Pickens took to the main stage where he was joined by Sierra Club president Carl Pope and Center for American Progress president John Podesta. Pope and Podesta enthusiastically endorsed the Pickens plan. Coupled with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s personal investment and rhetorical support for Pickens, it is becoming clear that the left is adopting the Pickens energy platform as their own.
Pickens took the time to explain his plan, and he did not skip over the part where he advocates developing our own natural gas resources to power our transportation industry. Pope spoke next and he sounded just like Nancy Pelosi did this Sunday, explaining he supported the Pickens plan since we needed to “move away from fossil fuels and to alternatives.” The reality that natural gas is a fossil fuel that must be drilled before it magically appears in trucks, seemed to totally escape Pope.
Podesta then asked for Pickens’ thoughts on the conservative “drill here, drill now” campaign. Pickens said that he did not believe the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that show there are 18.7 billion barrels currently off limits in the Outer Continental Shelf and another 10.3 billion barrels in ANWR. Pickens claimed there was, at best, 5% of the oil the EIA says there is in those banned areas. He didn’t explain how he knew this. Nor did he say if he thought the EIA was also wrong about the 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas they say is also in banned areas of the OCS.