diesel

A typical semi driver uses 15,000 gallons of diesel per year. The cost of natural gas as compared to diesel is $1.30 per gallon. Diesel is now over $4 and this could save a driver $40,000 per year so it is coming. It cost about $20,000 to convert a diesel to natural gas and this can be paid for in 6 months. Since there are about 7 million of these big rigs on the road it will replace 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. We currently import 1.5 million barrels per day from Saudi Arabia so we would no longer need their oil. A bill was put forth in the Senate, called the Pickens Plan, to use 5 billion dollars to incentivize the changeover of semis to natural gas and it passed 52 to 47 but that is not good enough. It needed 60. The Republicans stopped the bill because they are indebted to the oil industry. While the Pickens plan is co-sponsored by Democratic senators Menendez of New Jersey and Reid of Nevada, and Republican senator Burr of North Carolina, the Republican senate caucus is responsible for its defeat. Forty-four Democratic senators but only 7 Republicans voted to pass the Natural Gas Act. Thirty-eight Republicans and 9 Democrats voted against it. The defeat of the Pickens Plan largely was the result of conservative ideology, as exemplified by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, that opposes any effort to accelerate the substitution of oil with natural gas. Some people oppose natural gas because of fracking and I understand that but to oppose it just to help the oil companies is putting politics ahead of the country which of course is business as usual. One oil company Anadarko does invest in both oil and natural gas and it would seem logical that other big oil companies do the same but not yet. Instead of fighting natural gas perhaps they should join in this new technology and invest in gas.