T. Boone Pickens told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that he expects Congress to pass the Natural Gas Act by Memorial Day.  If it’s passed, the act would greatly increase the use of natural gas as a fuel for heavy-duty fleets, which would be a boon (pun most definitely intended) to Pickens’ company Clean Energy Fuels. Consuming the equivalent of 21 barrels of crude oil per day, the oil used to fuel heavy-duty fleets represents a large percentage of America’s petroleum use.

Pickens told the Chronicle “I think Congress is ready to address the problem. The problem is we are dependent on oil from the wrong places.”  However, Lou Hayden, a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, called getting the legislation passed by Memorial Day a “very aggressive” goal considering everything else that Congress has to deal with right now.

Pickens expects the act to  “reduce US dependence on imports from OPEC by 50??percent in seven years and create millions of jobs with a new energy economy.”

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