DALLAS — Oklahoma oil man and natural-gas supporter T. Boone Pickens on May 5 joined the chorus of optimistic voices speaking here at the 2015 ACT Expo that despite current cheap diesel prices, the future of natural gas as a transportation fuel hasn’t dimmed.
“Oil prices have dropped 50%,” Pickens said. "I have seen since 1980, six of these collapses of half the price of oil.”
Although Pickens said diesel will be the dominant fuel for a long time, he believes the price of natural gas will continue to be cheaper than diesel, even if the price of alternative fuel increases.
With the number of active oil drilling rigs in the United States declining to 672 from 1,609 since November, Pickens predicted that the price of oil will jump to $70 a barrel by the end of the year and to $100 by the end of next year.
"You now have demand going up, and you have rigs shutting down. Supply is going to drop, and the price is going to go up,” Pickens said.
Pickens said he wants more to see natural gas take hold in the trucking industry, where users buy fuel by the thousands of gallons, rather than in cars.
“There’s not going to be any trucker that buys a natural-gas truck and not know where he can fuel it,” Pickens said. “Those guys are smart guys, and they’ll work out their fueling before they buy the truck.”
But now the fuel is proven, he said.
“The fuel will do the job. You know the fuel is cleaner, and you know it’s cheaper,” Pickens said. “So anybody that’s using fuel if they looked at it and said ‘not for me, not yet,’ now they’re back looking at it again, saying ‘maybe it is for me, maybe it isn’t.' ”
