“Oil and gas magnate T. Boone Pickens is celebrating Thursday after President Barack Obama used a major energy speech to tout the increased use of natural gas vehicles — a key part of the so-called Pickens Plan.”
Politico continues:
t also turns out Pickens has visited the White House seven times since Obama took office, according to visitor logs.
Pickens did not personally discuss Thursday’s speech with the president, but his spokesman Jay Rosser said that “we have had contact with administration officials.”
Obama didn’t mention Pickens or the Pickens Plan-inspired NAT GAS Act by name in his Las Vegas speech. But he touted the creation of a natural gas corridor from Long Beach, Calif., to Salt Lake City that allows vehicles to fuel up along the highway and encourages companies to transition to a clean-energy fleet to transport goods.
“The experts believe it could support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade,” Obama said, referring to natural gas. “We, it turns out, are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We’ve got a lot of it.”
After Obama’s speech, Pickens spiked the football, saying, “My work here is done — almost.”
Pickens says he has spent “nearly $100 million” over 3½ years promoting his plan…
Check out JunkScience.com’s series on T. Boone Pickens rentseeking: