Latest local news, weather and high school sports from Amarillo - Powered by KVII

T. Boone Pickens is one of the most controversial newsmakers in the history of the Texas Panhandle, and he still has a huge impact on what happens financially in this region. Our Mitch Roberts went to Dallas for an ''exclusive'' sit down interview with Mr. Pickens, and put together a three part issue on issues that are important to the Panhandle.

Part one deals with his plans to move Panhandle groundwater from Roberts Country, downstate to the Dallas Ft. Worth area, and possibly even San Antonio. Will this leave the Panhandle high and dry?

Part two is about Boone's plans to build the world's largest wind farm in Gray County and parts of Roberts County. He had originally planned to have that wind farm in the construction phase, but several factors led his company to postpone those plans. Has that slowed down the wind energy boom in the Panhandle, and when might he try to get this project going forward once again?

Coming soon, part three is about the ''Pickens Plan' more specifically his ideas on how to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. One of the main elements includes transferring our nation's trucking fleets to run on compressed natural gas. With help from Washington, Boone says we can cut Opec in half in the next ten years. Cars can run on batteries, but only natural gas is powerful enough to move an 18 wheeler.

You can also enjoy looking at the raw clips of our entire interview with T. Boone Pickens, and please email us any questions you'd like to have Boone answer and we'll work with his office to get as many of those answered as possible. Thanks for watching this ''exclusive'' series in the Panhandle Spirit

Pickens Plan detail has support in Congress but not much traction:

By Greg Rohloff

Amarillo Independent

A measure to grease the financial wheels of converting American cars and trucks to natural gas has backing in Congress. But for now, it's mainly fueling a technical debate.

Should natural gas, the prime product of the Panhandle's oil and gas industry, fuel autos? Or should it power new electric power plants with the electricity to be used to charge plug-in hybrid vehicles?

United States Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., introduced on April 1 a measure, New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2009, known by its acronym the NAT GAS Act of 2009 to play on the words “natural gas.” The measure gained bipartisan support with 108 co-sponsors at last count, including U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon.

The proposal has the backing of natural gas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, who has organized a citizen's group urging greater use of natural gas and further development of wind energy as a way to cut national reliance on imported oil. He calls the effort the Pickens Plan, and is urging his supporters to pressure additional members of Congress to sign on to the measure so that it has 120 co-sponsors by Nov. 20.

For now, the measure has been sitting in the House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment since April 6. A companion measure is in the Senate Finance Committee because the legislation seeks to amend the Internal Revenue Code that would allow tax credits through 2027 for fuels made from natural gas and for natural gas-powered vehicles.

Additionally, it would require that half of the new vehicles placed into service by the federal government by the end of 2014 to be fueled by natural gas and provides research grants for natural gas-powered engines.

Ignoring the glacial pace of Congress on the matter, the most pertinent question is if such a switch is practical. Gasoline is the longstanding fuel of choice and is readily available at convenience stores and service stations. Replacing those outlets would be no small trick.

That difficulty is a prime point of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that insists that plug-in electric cars powered by electricity generated in natural gas-burning power plants is the way to go.

Their assumption is based on 70 percent of the nation's natural gas supply going to replace coal-fired power plants, supplemented by wind energy to produce electricity, and using 30 percent of the natural gas supply to fuel medium-and heavy-duty delivery trucks.

Such a plan would reduce about the same amount of oil as the Pickens Plan, according to the council's estimates but would eliminate more greenhouse gases. Their calculations assumes that electric vehicles would be 3.5 times more efficient than gasoline-powered vehicles, while natural gas powered vehicles would have the same mileage as gasoline-powered vehicles.

However, Paul Ronney, a professor in the University of Southern California Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, argues that natural gas is a practical replacement for gasoline because it is about half the price of gasoline and is unlikely to lose that price advantage.

To be certain, Ronney favors oil as a motor vehicle fuel, noting that part of the natural gas price advantage lies with the ease that oil is turned into gasoline. Natural gas fueling stations require either cooling equipment for liquefied natural gas or high-pressure compressors and pressure regulators for compressed natural gas.

He also has authored an academic paper, “Hydrocarbon-fueled internal combustion engines: 'the worst form of vehicle propulsion... except for all the other forms'” that argues that oil is the most likely fuel for the near future for cars while natural gas would be limited to short-range fleets such as taxis, shuttle vans and urban buses because natural gas requires a heavier tank, fittings and regulators that erase the advantage of having a greater energy density than gasoline.

Still, Ronney does not rule out natural gas-powered cars, simply because of its current cost advantage of about one-third to one-half the equivalent cost for a gallon of gasoline. Converting a gasoline engine to natural gas costs about $2,500, Ronney said in an e-mail interview. For a car that gets 30 miles per gallon on gasoline, the fuel costs for 100,000 miles of travel would be about $10,000 if gasoline averages $3 a gallon. Over that same span, a natural gas-fueled vehicle would have about $5,000 in fuel costs, saving $2,500 after the cost of conversion.

Ronney also notes in both the academic paper and in the interview, that hybrids rely on batteries that are both costly to replace and contain environmentally unfriendly materials.

As for finding natural gas as an auto fuel, making the sales pitch is the industry group Natural Gas Vehicles for America. It’s made up of various gas utilities, (but not Atmos) including large producers as Chesapeake Energy and a raft of natural gas equipment suppliers. It points out that 1,100 natural gas fueling stations are available now, with just over half available to the public and remainder used by private fleets — delivery trucks, buses and taxis. But that is a far cry from about 200,000 gasoline retailers in the U.S.

Thus, the association pushes private fleets such as taxis and buses as the first conversions because those operators typically rely on a single fueling point for their fleets.

Natural gas can be used either as compressed natural gas, which requires a compressor and high-pressure fuel storage tanks, or liquefied natural gas, which requires a thermos-type storage to keep the fuel cold enough to stay in a liquid state until it goes to the engine.

At compressed natural gas stations, fueling takes about the same amount of time as a standard gasoline station with the use of a large compressor and a nozzle similar to one that connects like an air compressor nozzle, locking in with secure fittings. Liquefied natural gas stations use similar fueling nozzles as standard gasoline lines now.

A slow-rate filling system, developed by Honda and the Fuelmaker Co. of Canada, and called Phill is designed for connecting to a home natural gas outlet, and refilling a car or truck at the rate of about a half gallon per hour overnight.