Pickens Backs Obama

T. Boone Pickens calls Obama's plan "an important step in achieving true energy reform."

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T. Boone Pickens said Wednesday he supports President Barack Obama’s efforts to promote offshore drilling on the East Coast.

Pickens is widely known as an advocate of growing America’s energy reserves through alternative energy sources and drilling.

“President Obama’s plan to promote more offshore drilling for oil and natural gas is an important step in achieving true energy reform,” Pickens said. “We should be taking full advantage of every available American resource to help decrease our crippling dependency on foreign oil—a dependency that is slowing our economic recovery and jeopardizing our homeland security.”

Last month, Pickens said the United States continues to be too dependent on foreign oil imports, even as the economy has weakened demand.

The well-known financier and renewable-energy proponent reported that the United States imported 59 percent of its oil—or 322 million barrels—in February 2010, sending $24.6 billion overseas. In the first two months of the year, America paid about $50 billion for foreign oil.

“As the U.S. economy continues to struggle, demand for oil continues to be weak,” Pickens said in a statement. “But our dependence is also slowing the economic recovery. Every new barrel we add to our demand has to come from a foreign country, and that means money leaving our own economy.”

Pickens continues to push his renewable-energy program, dubbed the Pickens Plan, saying that the country can cut back on its foreign oil dependence by investing in wind and solar power and by using supplies of natural gas for transportation fuel.