Energy Industry Leaders Take Stock of America's Relationship With Foreign Oil

T. Boone Pickens and Governor Haley Barbour

Governors from across the south met with energy insiders this week to discuss the future of America’s energy policy. MPB’s Phoebe Judge has more.

Oil Tycoon T. Boone Pickens was the last speaker to address the Southern Growth Policies annual meeting in Biloxi, and he delivered a simple message the United States must become less dependent on foreign oil.

“We’ve gotten completely addicted to foreign oil and so the foreign oil it just is to me just unacceptable.”

The United States imports 68% of its oil from places like Venezuela, the Middle East, and Africa. Pickens says not only does that pose a security risk to the U.S., but it also dictates prices when there is already an abundance of oil and gas resources sitting untapped in the United States. Last July Pickens rolled out the Pickens Plan, which aims to reduce the U.S’s dependency on foreign oil by using any American means necessary be it natural gas or wind power,

“So let’s get on our own resources and get away from them. With our resources we cannot compete, we cannot bring the price of oil down because we have nothing to compete with.”

Governor Barbour, who has expressed great concern over the Obama administration's energy policy which would raise taxes on oil and gas industries by $81 billion dollars, agrees that something has to change,

“If we are going to have less American energy and less affordable energy than we are going to have a lower standard of living and less competitive economy.”

Governor Barbour says the Obama administration's energy policy could increase Mississippi resident’s utility bills by $50 dollars a month.